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ECHOES AND MEMORIES 





‘ECHOES AND... 
MEMORIES 


BY \ 


BRAMWELL BOOTH 


‘Your fame is as the grass whose hue comes 
and goes, and His might withers it by Whose 
power it sprang from the lap of the earth’ 

, Dante 





GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 


FOREWORD 


Tuis book is mainly a series of personal impres- 
sions of various people I have known, some of 
them very intimately, others but casually. I 
confess that certain of these people I have not 
at all understood, but many of them I have 
admired, and a number I have loved. There 
are some faintly sketched references to men of 
eminence in various walks of life, with whom, 
in one way or another, I came in contact up to 
the time when I became the General of The 
Salvation Army; these chapters are not con- 
cerned with the period subsequent to that date. 
Reference is made also to some whose names 
belong to the humble rank and file of The Army 
itself. These are men and women whose 
histories are not to be found in any book of 
contemporary biography, but their names are 
written in heaven. Many of them had an in- 
fluence on me and on multitudes of others out 
of all proportion to their worldly renown. 
Here are also some memories of Salvation 
Army life and warfare as I recall them. I 
hesitate to obtrude myself in these pages, but 
I think it will be obvious that my appearance is 
necessary if only for the purpose of introduction. 


Vv 


vi FOREWORD 


Several of these chapters have already 
appeared in a Review circulating exclusively 
amongst our Staff, and I have found some — 
advantage in their publication, since a Move- 
ment such as ours has much to learn in the 
present from its own past. 

My life is a crowded one, and it may be that 
I have included here memories which I have 
found it easiest to recall when possibly I had 
better have laid hold of more important con- 
cerns. 

I have to thank Colonel Carpenter, of my 
Staff, and Mr. Harry Cooper, a Journalist of this 
City, for assisting me in preparing the matter 
for publication and passing it through the press. 

BRAMWELL Boot. 
THE SALVATION ARMY, 


Lonpon, E.C. 4. 
November, 1925. 


CHAP. 


r. 
II. 


CONTENTS 


FATHER AND SON 


THE First GENERAL OF THE SALVATION ARMY 


AND HIS CHIEF OF STAFF . 


. THE PROPHET 

. DISTURBERS OF THE PEACE . 

. FRIENDS IN NEED , 

. How THE BUTTONS CAME OFF 

. ‘SIGNS AND WONDERS’ . 

. THE FOUNDER AND THE BISHOPS 

. SOME OTHER CHURCHMEN I HAVE KNOWN 
. A MANAGER OF MEN 

. SWEDEN AND ALL THE WORLD 

. SOME METHODS OF ARREST . 

. STORIES OF THE ARMY’S TREASURY 
. THE MINOTAUR 

. THE OLD BAILEY 

. GLIMPSES OF STATESMEN 

. W. T. STEAD AND CECIL RHODES 

. EARTHEN VESSELS 

. THE CALL AND MINISTRY OF WOMAN 
. BENCH AND BAR 

. MorRE ABOUT THE LAw’s MAJESTY 
. CONCERNING “SACRAMENTS ’ . 

. A BRUSH WITH HERBERT SPENCER 
. PURELY PERSONAL . 

. CORONATIONS 


vii 


103 
II5 
125 
133 
I4l 
153 
161 
173 
181 
IQI 
201 
209 
215 





I 
FATHER AND SON 


ONE picture among the many that I cherish of my father 
I should like to place at the very beginning of what I have 
to say of him here. It explains a certain new development 
in the history of The Army, but it also gives a glimpse of 
the deep fires that burned in the personality of William 
Booth. One morning, away back in the eighties, I was an 
early caller at his house in Clapton. Here I found him in 
his dressing-room, completing his toilet with ferocious 
energy. The hair-brushes which he held in either hand 
were being wielded with quite eloquent vigour upon a mane 
that was more refractory than usual, and his braces were 
flying like the wings of Pegasus. No good-morning-how-do- 
you-do here ! 

‘Bramwell,’ he cried, when he caught sight of me, ‘ did 
you know that men slept out all night on the bridges ?’ 

He had arrived in London very late the night before 
from some town in the south of England, and had to cross 
the city to reach his home. What he had seen on that mid- 
night return accounted for this morning tornado. Did I 
know that men slept out all night on the Bridges ? 

‘Well, yes,’ I replied, ‘a lot of poor fellows, I suppose, 
do that.’ 

‘Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself to have 
known it and to have done nothing for them,’ he went on, 
vehemently. 

I began to speak of the difficulties, burdened as we were 
already, of taking up all sorts of Poor Law work, and so 
forth. My father stopped me with a peremptory wave of 
the brushes. 


B I 


2 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


‘Go and do something!’ he said. ‘ We must do some- 
thing.’ 

‘What can we do ?’ 

“Get them a shelter !’ 

‘ That will cost money.’ 

‘Well, that is your affair! Something must be done. 
Get hold of a warehouse and warm it, and find something 
to cover them. But mind, Bramwell, no coddling!’ 

That was the beginning of The Salvation Army Shelters, 
the earliest and most typical institutions connected with 
our now world-wide Social Work. But it also throws a ray 
of light on the characteristic benevolence of The Army’s 
Founder. Benevolence, which is a languid quality in many - 
men, with him was passionate. I should be disposed to 
place his benevolence first among his characteristics. I 
write of him here, as far as it is possible to do so, aside from 
what I humbly acknowledge to have been the great deter- 
mining force of his life—namely, the uplifting and guiding 
influence of the Spirit of God. This apart, his benevolence 
was the first quality to light up. The governing influence 
of his life was good will to his fellows. I am not saying that 
he never thought of himself. His saintship was not after 
the pattern of Francis d’Assisi, at least as described by Paul 
Sabatier. Nor can I say that he was always at the same 
level of self-denial and self-effacement in order to give prac- 
tical expression to his benevolent impulse. But I do say, 
looking at his life as I saw it over a great span of years, 
not only in workday association as his comrade and principal 
helper, but in the still closer intimacy of a son, that his 
benevolence was the leading feature of his character. He 
really set out to do good to all men—an object which, no 
doubt, often seemed hopeless, but not on that account to be 
less sought after. The horizon of his soul was not limited 
by human hope—it reached out to Divine Power and Love. 
His heart was a bottomless well of compassion, and it was 
for this reason principally that, although perhaps more 
widely and persistently abused than any other figure of 
his time, he was even more widely and tenaciously loved. 

It would be easy to multiply evidences of his own 


FATHER AND SON 3 


unselfishness. The slander that he enriched himself was not 
merely untrue, it was ridiculously untrue. It was not 
merely a distortion of the facts, it was an inversion of them. 
Again and again he had legitimate opportunities to enrich 
himself, and no one could have flung a stone at him had he 
accepted them, but he turned them down without hesitating 
a moment. Rich men even sent him blank cheques on 
condition that the amount which he filled in he should apply 
to his own personal use. The cheques were returned. For 
The Army he was ready to accept such gifts with both 
hands ; for himself, not at all. 

Next to this, among his outstanding qualities—and, 
indeed, I am always in doubt whether it should not>be 
placed first—was his temperamental simplicity. If ‘his 
appearance, with his smooth and open forehead, his kindling 
and flashing eyes, his ‘eminent’ nose, his shaggy visage, 
his general expression of keenness and vivacity, suggested 
some ancient prophet, his heart was the heart of a little child. 
His guilelessness was one great secret of his strength. Many 
who came into his presence were so impressed by his open- 
ness and candour, the absence of all pretence and casuistry, 
that they went away feeling that if they had a thousand 
lives they could trust them into his hands. 

This simplicity of character, of course, had its apparent 
disadvantages. He would often say what everybody 
thought to be impolitic. The fear of his occasional impru- 
dences gave me bad half-hours! There were interviews of 
great importance ; for example, when it was certainly the 
part of worldly, if not of spiritual wisdom to refrain from 
entering upon certain subjects so long as silence could be 
maintained with honour. In such circumstances he was 
never to be trusted, however much he might have been 
entreated beforehand! The interview would be _ half 
through, when out would come the cat from the bag! It 
was delightful, and I am bound to say that I never—or very 
rarely—found anything but good come of his ‘ indiscretions,’ 
however much they might give me and others ‘ pins and 
needles’ at the time. 

In the same way, if, in urging any particular course 


4 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


upon others, he had any second intention, something at the 
back of his mind—any arriéve-pensee, as the saying is—it 
was safe to make its appearance before the parley ended. 
He could not have kept it back. 

Anything ‘ put on’ or ‘made up’ was anatheina. His 
honesty was not based on the infamous copy-book maxim. 
Had he been a thief—and he was in the habit of saying that 
by nature he was a grabber !—he would have been a shining 
example of the honour which is supposed to exist among 
the fraternity ! Nor was he honest only because his religion 
made him so, although, of course, his religion fortified him 
in his honesty. But sincerity was a native quality with him. 
It was in the mould from which he was taken. If it were 
possible to think of William Booth without his religion, 
such a William Booth would certainly have been a sincere 
and honest man. 

The third outstanding characteristic in him was his 
granite and superlative will. He was immovable, and there- 
fore, in the passive sense, invincible. Anything like slackness 
or wobbling or unsteadiness in purpose was abhorred. When 
he had considered a matter, and made up his mind about it, 
not all the angels of Heaven could have shaken his deter- 
mination. This led him at times upon a line of conduct 
which may have appeared pedantic to those who did not 
understand ; yet one could never forget that it was this 
strength in him which enabled him to achieve so much. 
His determined and steadfast will was really the driving 
force of his other qualities. 

It was these three characteristics in combination which 
distinguished his personality and marked him out in his 
generation. Other men, no doubt, have had equal power of 
will, but without his genius for compassion ; others, again, 
may have had a like simplicity, but without the indomitable 
will. It was his will power which directed his other qualities 
to practical ends. Without it he would still have been 
splendid and most lovable, but he would not have been the 
Founder of The Salvation Army. 

He had, I dare say, the faults of these qualities. His 
own benevolence made him impatient of the selfish and, 


FATHER AND SON 5 


perhaps, too swift in his judgment of those who only cared 
to gratify themselves. He was at times a hasty executioner, 
deaf to excuses until after the culprit’s head was off ! 

His sincerity, too, as I have already hinted, had its 
embarrassing side. In writing of W. E. Gladstone, Lord 
Morley said that ‘ He had a marked habit of believing peo- 
ple ; it was part of his simplicity.’ Well, so with my father. 
He believed people. He was so utterly sincere himself that 
he could not credit that others could practise any deception. 
It was only with the greatest difficulty, and in face of the 
most unquestionable evidence, that he would accept the 
fact that he had been intentionally misled or treated un- 
fairly. In the official life of The Army, long after he should 
have let people go, in the interests of The Army itself, which 
does not want those who are not of it, he persisted in holding 
on to them. It was not a mere polite reluctance to believe 
that men were not honourable and straightforward ; it was 
almost a constitutional inability. 

His great will power, again, at times made him difficult 
to deal with. His own determination clashed with the 
determination of others, and the sudden friction produced 
sparks; not often, fortunately, leading to conflagrations, 
though sometimes these did happen. No doubt, there was 
a vein of hardness in him. It ran side by side with a vein 
of exquisite tenderness. But the hardness was there. Had 
it not been there he could not have accomplished what he 
did. Weakness always fails. 4 

It is impossible to speak of my father in this intimate 
way without some estimate of the influence of my mother 
upon him. That influence was extraordinarily uplifting and 
encouraging, especially during the early years of the Move- 
ment, when he was hable to depression and to a sense of 
loneliness, both of which wore off, in some measure, as the 
success of the work became assured. Catherine Booth 
continually fed his enthusiasm with fresh fuel, strengthened 
his faith in God, and pointed him to the gleaming distance. 
She was the complement of him as he was of her. Marvel- 
lously did they fit into one another. Where his temperament 
made him unsure, she was buoyant ; where she would waver, 


6 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


he was rock. Both of them, I dare say, had faults, his a 
certain superficial irritability, especially when worn and 
tried ; hers the inclination to take the less hopeful view on 
certain matters. But the faults of each were wonderfully 
neutralized in the personality of the other. 

In some senses she was more combative than he. She 
was, for example, more inclined to resent the injustices to 
which, especially again in the early days, The Army was 
continually subject. He was rather content to let such 
opposition tire itself out, and to answer misrepresentation 
by silence, because he feared that to turn aside upon these 
guerilla engagements would be to weaken the arm for the 
real fight against the hosts of the Devil who held captive 
the souls of men. ‘ Better,’ he used to say, ‘ better to suffer 
than contend.’ But her counsel was ever, ‘Up, and at 
them, William!’ She was a warrior ; of compromise she 
would have none. 

Their relations during all the thirty years that I had 
experience of them together were ideal. His love for her 
was entirely beautiful—something quite out of the ordinary, 
even in the happiest unions. Muingled with his love was an 
element of deep admiration for her uncommon ability. She 
was far more widely read than he. Certain circumstances 
of her youth had favoured what was naturally a studious 
temperament, and her spiritual influence, her devotion to 
Jesus Christ, her intense longings for the advance of His 
Kingdom on earth, her intellectual skill, her command of 
widely gathered information helped him in his hurried and 
stormy life to look beyond his own immediate interests and 
ideas, and to look on to that City which hath foundations. 
Speaking beside her open grave, he said : 


I have never turned from her these forty years for any journeyings 
on my mission of mercy, but I longed to get back, and have counted 
the weeks, days, and hours which should take me again to her side. 
When she has gone away from me it has been just the same. And 
now she has gone away for the last time. What then is there left 
for me to do? Not to count the weeks, the days, and the hours 
which shall bring me again into her sweet company, seeing that I 
know not what will be on the morrow, nor what an hour may bring 
forth. My work plainly is to fill up the weeks, the days, the hours, 


FATHER AND SON 7 


and cheer my poor heart as I go along with the thought that when I 
have served my Christ and my generation according to the will of 
God, which I vow this afternoon I will to the last drop of my blood 
—then I trust that she will bid me welcome to the Skies as He bade 
her. 


Her delicacy of health, which was the heritage of spinal 
trouble in her girlhood, unfitted her in some respects to be 
the wife of a poor minister, whose income was scarcely 
sufficient to cover the domestic needs. There is an under- 
tone in some of her letters to him before their marriage 
which suggests that she could see him occupying a very 
different station, and one worthier of the powers she already 
knew him to possess. In my boyhood I have sometimes 
known her exceedingly harassed by the cares of a house full 
of children, and tried, no doubt, by straitened circumstances, 
and by her own bodily weakness. I have seen him come into 
the house, put his hat down in the hall, and, entering the 
room, find it all out in a moment. Taking her hand, he 
would say, ‘ Kate, let me pray with you,’ and he would turn 
us out while they knelt together. Then a little while after 
it was evident that the skies were blue again. 

Although he was at times irascible, and, when displeased, 
had great liberty of speech, I never heard him in all those 
long years—many of them years of intense strain upon 
them both, with all the demands which poverty and sickness 
make upon patience and kindness in the home—say one 
harsh word to her. There were times when he would arrive 
at the house like a hurricane, blowing, as it were, the children 
right and left—we used to call him the ‘ Bishop’ in those 
early days, and sometimes, although we loved the very 
ground he trod upon, we were unanimously agreed on the 
advisability of keeping out of the way of his ‘ visitations ’ 
—but to her he would be like a lover of twenty come to visit 
his girl ! 

I touch with hesitation the subject of my father’s religion. 
How, indeed, can it be dealt with in a page of reminiscence | 
But, at least, this may be said: that it was never a platform 
pose. The religion he commended to his fellows with such 
directness and sincerity was the religion which he himself 


§ ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


accepted with all his heart and lived with all his might. 
And it was a success. It sustained him especially in those 
later years when he was sorrow-stricken and really heart- 
broken by the loss of those he loved. I do not suggest that 
he was always shouting the praises of God at the top of 
his voice to his housekeeper, but I do say that amid all 
the innumerable affairs of his crowded life the vision of a 
Mighty God, and of a present Saviour, was ever before him 
—was ever the great possession of his soul—that he had a 
fine consciousness of responsibility to God for every gift he 
possessed and a profound sense of Eternal Things. 

Despite his wonderful capacity for eliciting the emotions 
of others, often playing upon them as a harper upon the 
strings, he was singularly reticent about his own inner life. 
He was totally innocent of ‘ gush.’ Yet who that knew him 
could doubt the reality of his spiritual experience? It 
sustained him amid persecutions, slanders, and conflicts, and 
under the burden of a world of cares such as few men have 
been called to endure. It did more than sustain him in 
the stoic sense ; it kept his spirit sweet. When I have gone 
to him, perhaps with some infamous newspaper attack, and 
in my indignation have said, ‘ This is really more than we 
can stand,’ he has replied, ‘ Bramwell, fifty years hence it 
will matter very little indeed how these people treated us ; 
it will matter a great deal how we dealt with the work of 
aod.’ He would not accuse those who accused him. He 
would not impugn motives or imply evil. He could speak 
sut when duty demanded. But he did not wish to speak. 
He would never take unfair advantage in argument or treat 
personalities as reasons. He rather strove to account for 
the mistakes of his opponents, and to hope all things. It 
was his rule not to retaliate, scarcely to explain, and it was 
perfectly delightful to see how many cursings and railings 
turned out in the end to be blessings. There is a story of 
one of our Canadian Officers who, on being pelted with eggs, 
found that by some mistake of the mob the eggs were quite 
good, and, deftly catching them, she ee turned them 
into omelettes ! 

That was William Booth all over ! 


IT 


THE FIRST GENERAL OF THE SALVATION ARMY AND 
HIS CHIEF OF STAFF 


Tuts book is not the place for a considered estimate of my 
father’s achievements. That has been undertaken already 
by another hand, not the hand of a son nor even the hand 
of a Soldier of The Salvation Army, but the result is perhaps 
all the more balanced and complete because of the fresh, 
untrammelled mind which Mr. Harold Begbie brought 
to his task.1 Constant and intimate association with a man, 
such as I had with my father until I myself was almost 
within hail of threescore, may have the effect, if not of 
concealing, at least of foreshortening the view. Fully to 
survey a great personality, it may be necessary to abide a 
day’s journey away from the mount. 

At the same time, my relations with the first General 
were of quite an unusual kind. I was not only his eldest 
son, but one of his Officers for nearly forty years of the 
hurly-burly of a strenuous campaign, and his Chief of the 
Staff for more than thirty; and as I am often asked by 
those who have studied The Army with some degree of care 
how affairs were managed between my father and myself, it 
may be not only interesting, but perhaps useful, to put on 
record something of the manner in which we worked to- 
gether. Our co-operation over so long a period, and on so 
varied a field of activity, is a remarkable circumstance, 
especially when it is remembered that our temperaments 
were different and our points of view by no means always 
the same. 

It would be foolish to pretend that we were invariably 
of one mind. On the contrary, from-time to time we 
differed, both in judgment and feeling, with regard to some 

1 ‘William Booth,’ by Harold Begbie. (Macmillan.) 
9 


10 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


of the most difficult problems to be solved. Nor can I say 
that, in the light of subsequent events, either of us has 
proved to be always right. Oftener than not, from my very 
first experience of the responsibilities of an Officer in close 
association with him, the questions which exercised us levied 
toll not only on all our mental but on our spiritual resources. 
We had from the beginning—the day of very small things— 
the sense that we were really dealing with large affairs, 
though we—lI especially, of course—had little experience of 
such affairs. The Movement with which we had to do was 
a new movement; we had no precedent to go upon, very 
little experience to guide us. Much that we did had to be 
done literally as an act of faith. We were often in such 
complete and balanced uncertainty as seemed to make any 
given course highly speculative. 

Moreover, we were both of us very ignorant as to many 
matters which were essential to success (though we had the 
saving virtue of knowing it !), and yet we were the respon- 
sible guides of a ‘concern,’ as we sometimes called it, to 
which hundreds, and presently thousands, of men and 
women were giving their allegiance, abandoning in so doing 
their worldly prospects, and even in many cases severing 
their family connexions. In later years considerable accu- 
mulations of property also came under our control, though 
we were but slightly versed in the ways of finance and the 
business world. In this respect, of all others, previous 
experience would have been of the highest value, and we 
had almost none. We had to build the ship while we were 
at sea, and not only build the ship, but master the laws of 
navigation, and not only master the laws of navigation, but 
hammer sense into a strangely assorted crew ! 

This ignorance was not without its advantages, if only 
because it stimulated us—especially me-—to study at first 
hand the questions on which we needed information. Al- 
though my father had an amazing kind of intuition, he had 
not a particle of the folly which supposes that this can take 
the place of careful investigation and vigilant balancing of 
judgment. As The Army began to develop an international 
organization, we came up with such large questions as the 


THE FIRST GENERAL AND HIS CHIEF II 


laws of different countries and their bearing upon our work, 
status, and possessions in those countries, or the way in 
which our disturbing and irregular methods could be best 
adapted to fresh environments. He would charge me to 
enter on a course of research into such subjects, and would 
himself also labour over them, until we had _ sufficient 
material to enable him to make decisions. Experts were 
available, of course—at any rate in some departments of 
effort—and he neither despised them nor stood in awe of 
them. He knew that undue reliance on experts was likely 
to lead us into mistakes, and their advice was only acted 
upon when we had assured ourselves that it was not 
materially opposed to his own instincts as to what was best. 
The character of much of the work was so new in religious 
history that many decisions, even though they seemed at 
the time to involve only minor points of policy and method, 
proved to be of great importance. If we ‘rolled the old 
chariot along,’ as our song runs, it was never on a rutted 
road. It was often on tracks that were scarcely a road at 
all. 

As the years passed on, not only did the occupied 
territory greatly extend, but the operations became more 
diverse, and in some ways complicated, though in all this 
we kept ever in mind our own overruling purpose—the 
illumination and spiritual emancipation of the people. 

The list of the operations of The Army towards the end 
of the Founder’s life included services and visitations for 
the churchless masses, evangelistic, educational, and social 
work for the heathen abroad, labour bureaux and indus- 
trial homes and workshops for the unemployed, food dépéts, 
and the provision of breakfasts and other meals for the 
starving, migration and other assistance for the workless, 
shelters for the homeless, homes and colonies for inebriates, 
prison visitation and police-court and prison-gate work for 
the criminal, homes and hospitals for the daughters of shame, 
preventive work for young girls, nursing, clothing dépdts, 
and holiday homes for the people of the slums, hospitals 
and dispensaries for the sick, special corps, bands, schools, 
leagues, and a host of other agencies for the young. Then 


12 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


there were land schemes and innumerable other features 
of service for those who in one direction or another needed 
help. 

Although my father was the General and I was his chief 
executive Officer, there was, after the first few years, no 
very hard-and-fast division of authority between us. He 
continued—at any rate until the last ten or twelve years of 
his life—to do many things which would ordinarily have 
fallen to me as Chief of Staff. For example, when he felt 
able during his distant travels to decide matters on the spot, 
it would have been ridiculous to have referred them to me 
in London merely because technically such matters came 
within my appointed province. Again, when he was thou- 
sands of miles away he unhesitatingly required me to make 
decisions which ought properly to have been left to him if 
he had been more accessible. In the ordinary routine he was 
both generous and wise in guarding my position. He made 
my office a reality, and not a mere name; and in the course 
of time he increasingly left large affairs in my hands—to 
take action on his behalf often without reference to him. 

In certain respects he was exacting. For example, he 
required that any information I set before him or for which 
I was responsible, should be authentic beyond cavil; and if 
I tripped, as I am afraid occasionally happened, either 
through my own fault or the inefficiency of others, and cir- 
cumstances turned out otherwise than he had been led to 
believe, he could be very angry, and rightly angry. On 
such occasions he showed his displeasure in a way that was 
sometimes grievous to bear. 

One of his characteristic requirements was that both 
sides of every course of action should be fully stated. If, 
for example, his advisers—I among them—had made up 
our minds to propose a certain course of action with regard, 
say, to new work in Europe or to fresh financial arrange- 
ments, perhaps in India, or to the promotion and transfer 
of a particular Officer, he insisted, when the matter was 
submitted to him, that we should argue against the projected 
course as well as in its favour. All that we were aware of 
on the other side of the question had to be put before him. 


THE FIRST GENERAL AND HIS CHIEF 13 


We had sometimes perforce to take the réle of an advocatus 
diabolt, and woe betide any one who was found afterwards 
not to have disclosed everything! It was the same in all 
matters. Never would he allow any retreat under the 
familiar plea, ‘ Ah, but if you only knew all!’ His instant 
reply to such an observation was, ‘ If you know anything 
that I don’t, what are you there for but to tell me?’ 

I do not mean to say that on every question he adopted 
the extreme course just indicated. If only because of the 
multiplicity of matters requiring decision, that would have 
been impracticable. He took the advice of his Staff on 
many matters without very close inquiry, especially during 
the last twenty years of his life. But when on any point 
there was a difference of opinion, or he was in doubt and 
asked for further particulars, or required us to study a case 
from its opposite aspect, then everything had to be laid on 
the table. The unbroken happiness of my long relationship 
with him was greatly furthered by my own scrupulous care 
to muster the pvo and con of every matter of serious import 
which came before us, although this often involved immense 
labour for myself, and sometimes—not often—unpleasant- 
ness with other responsible Officers. But the slightest idea 
that something was being kept back, no matter whether he 
was in London or ten thousand miles away, was fatal to his 
peace of mind—and to ours! 

We had, of course, differences of opinion. They some- 
times cut deep and caused me—as I know they caused him 
—very considerable searching of heart, especially so, in his 
case, when a final decision had to be taken in opposition 
to my views. Yet in undertaking by his instructions a given 
course the wisdom of which I doubted, I was always helped 
by his patience in hearing all that we had to say against 
what he thought best, and by his evident desire not merely 
to gratify some whim of his own, but to do what was for the 
highest welfare of The Army and of the Kingdom of God. 

He was very agreeable to do business with. Conferences 
were a reality. The youngest member present felt that his 
advice was sought for and valued. No time was begrudged, 
no labour spared, to explore fully the questions before him. 


14 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


When he was in doubt about this or that course, he would 
reserve decision for thought and prayer. When his mind 
was made up there was no use spending another moment 
on the matter. His humour was a great help. If one vexed 
him, and the heavens were suddenly darkened, sure enough 
the clouds quickly passed and out came the sun. In later 
years he acted on the principle that ‘the king can do no 
wrong ’—that we, the men he called in on the different 
questions and problems, and whom he trusted so fully, were 
responsible advisers, and that if mistakes were made, we 
ought to have guided him in a better way. 

One beautiful trait of his was that if, in the long run, it 
turned out that he had been mistaken in his own judgment, 
he would always acknowledge it with a quite delightful frank- 
ness. At times he would go unnecessarily out of his way to 
have it made clear that another had proved right and he had 
been wrong. That also helped to win for him not only the 
affection and esteem but the perfect confidence of those he led. 

The world best knew the Founder as he appeared 
when on the platform, but to his Officers the picture of 
him which is most complete is his appearance at the Officers’ 
Councils—to which only his Officers were admitted— 
in different parts of the world. Each of these gatherings 
would probably extend over two or three days, and each 
day would have its three long sessions. Councils with the 
Staff often continued much longer. A month or some- 
times more would be devoted to preparation for such 
assemblies, when various phases of the work in its most 
recent developments, or its approaching advances, would be 
faithfully examined, and both possibilities and weaknesses 
explored. In preparing for these Councils the Founder 
frequently called in the most experienced of his Staff, and 
his own notes were of the most comprehensive character. 
In such gatherings he never spared himself, and his prepara- 
tion was usually so complete as to make him independent of 
the inspiration of the moment, though if that inspiration 
came he took advantage of it to the full. We had in these 
Councils some glorious experiences of light and freedom in 
the presence of the Lord, and revelations under which all 


THE FIRST GENERAL AND HIS CHIEF 15 


hearts were united in love and joy with the Greatheart who 
led us forward. 

No doubt, my relationship as his son had some dis- 
advantages, but it was helpful, too. While I must say that 
he seldom if ever forgot the General in thinking of the father, 
I can say on the other hand that I never forgot the father in 
dealing with the General. I do not mean that I presumed 
because of my relationship, nor would he have brooked this 
for a moment, he who knew no man after the flesh. But 
the remembrance of it was a help to me in moments of 
special anxiety or strain. 

The life in our old home was a training for me. While 
he was always a forceful and dominating personality, and 
also most sensitive to anything that seemed like unfaithful- 
ness or undutifulness, he was remarkably tolerant of differ- 
ent opinions over the family table. In all our discussions 
at home, whether on historical, political, social, or religious 
questions, we were permitted great freedom of expression— 
within limits, of course—although the views of the ardent 
youth about him must often have run counter to his own. 
He liked to hear the other side, and, knowing this, I never 
hesitated to reason with him, although sometimes he would 
more or less playfully object, and tell me that I would stand 
arguing with death itself! This freedom of expression car- 
tied over, so to speak, into our official relations. It gave 
me more tenacity in arguing a case, and I think it also 
enabled him to understand, even when his orders had been 
most peremptory, and I had sallied forth to carry out in- 
structions about which I had anxious misgivings, that after 
all I might be right! 

He was sometimes nervous and hasty, but always with 
such kindliness in the background that one could love— 
and I did love—his every mood. And so we never quarrelled. 
The differences, which were those of method, rather than of 
principle, were quickly adjusted. Every day brought to us 
some mountain to hit, some gulf to bridge, but we worked 
together in true love for God and man and for each other, 
and somehow the crooked bits in the road were made straight 
and the rough places plain. While I can say nothing of 


16 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


any faculty for conciliation or accommodation which I may 
possess, I feel that I was greatly privileged to be able to 
work with him for forty years, ever feeling for him an 
increasing reverence and deeper affection, and carrying, as 
time went on, a larger and larger share of responsibility, 
which, in his own generous words, made it possible for him 
to do what otherwise he would not have been able to 
accomplish. 


Iil 
THE PROPHET 


JoHN WESLEY is said to have preached 40,000 sermons, 
and to have travelled 250,000 miles. The number of sermons 
which my father preached during his sixty years of evangel- 
istic campaigning was, on a low estimate, between 50,000 
and 60,000; and for every mile that Wesley travelled, he 
must have travelled twenty. Wesley, of course, had to go 
on horseback or by coach; William Booth had the advan- 
tage of the railway and the steamship, and, in his later 
years, the motor-car. Thanks to these methods oi loco- 
motion, the voice of William Booth was heard by greater 
multitudes of every race and nation than the voice of any 
mortal man had been heard before. Nor can any preacher 
have made a pulpit of so many strange platforms. The 
theatre stage, the circus ring, the grand stand of the race- 
course, the footboard of the railway carriage, the captain’s 
bridge, the stall in the market-place, the drinking trough on 
the village green, the magistrate’s bench, the convict prison, 
the bleak and stormy headland, the sheltered inlet by the 
sea, the dais of the American Senate, the rostrum of the 
London Guildhall, the Indian pandal, the University quad- 
rangle—they all served his purpose. 

What impression did he leave on the minds of those who 
heard him? Mr. Harold Begbie, who accompanied him on 
part of a motor tour from Penzance to Aberdeen, in 1904, 
wrote with genuine insight? : 

One discovers, the longer one listens to General Booth, a noble- 
ness of diction in his oratory. It is all simple and rugged and real. 
His voice is against him, he has the Nottingham sing-song ; but this 
has no effect on the burden of his tale. Moreover, some of his 

1 In the ‘ Daily Mail’ (London), August 12, 1904. 
= 17 


18 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


sentiments strike a discordant note, . . . but the general result of 
his oratory is the conviction of the eternal and infinite mysteries, 
and the uplifting and magnifying of the spiritual existence in each 
separate soul before him, 


The same writer went on to say that the spiritual conflict of 
Faust was a poor and bloodless drama compared with the 
rugged rock-hewn tragedy which this preacher forced into 
the souls of his breathless listeners. 

One of the greatest talkers of his age, my father was yet 
most diffident about his own powers. Many a time in great 
auditoriums he has said to me just before rising to speak, 
‘Pray for me; I feel like sinking through the floor.’ He 
has again and again declared himself utterly unequal to 
the occasion and the opportunity. I have seen him also in 
great weakness, when his merely physical condition quite 
obviously unfitted him for the strain of a public address. 
That strain was all the greater because he never, or very 
rarely, allowed himself to use notes in his great Meetings. 
Any notes which he might have made he kept in his pocket. 
He preached often when he was little prepared, sometimes 
when he was not prepared at all; often again under the 
compulsion of haste, or in fatigue even to the point of ex- 
haustion. Yet after he had risen and gone to the platform 
rail, the depression was, as a rule, soon shaken off, his frailty 
seemed to disappear, and presently he suggested nothing so 
much as a fighting champion triumphing in the fray. 

I cannot subscribe to the view that his power on the 
platform depended in any great measure upon his appear- 
ance. Nevertheless, his appearance did help him to obtain 
attention. His splendid head and fine profile, and keen, 
flashing eyes, his outstretched arms, his scarlet jersey, his 
erect and yet supple figure, swayed at times like a tree in 
the wind, all gave the most casual listener the impression 
of something quite out of the ordinary. They put an 
audience in an expectant mood. His voice was powerful 
without being loud. It was a voice that wore well. On 
occasion, when he spoke, for example, in such places as the 
Albert Hall or the Transept of the Crystal Palace, or in 
the Madison Square Gardens in New York, or the Circus 


THE PROPHET 19 


Busch in Berlin, he could by an effort compass an immense 
area, and hold a great throng, in the old phrase, spellbound. 
These were, of course, the days before amplifiers. 

His opening was customarily quiet, almost lamb-like. It 
was an astonishing contrast—his striking and aggressive 
appearance, and the gentleness with which he began to talk. 
No loud or sensational beginning could have arrested an 
audience so completely. Then one or two propositions 
would be presented, often quite simple, sometimes more 
profound, more difficult to accept, or requiring to be sup- 
ported by further argument. After this, warming to his 
topic, he would introduce incidents by way of illustration 
or appeal out of his own vast experience. These would be 
told rapidly, and helped in the telling by a touch of humour 
or pathos, and then he would go on to a final appeal, sparing 
nothing in directness, urged with tremendous energy in 
which the whole man—body, soul, and spirit—seemed to 
share. Sometimes, even at moments of great tension, his 
manner would be very subdued, and personally I liked him 
best then. At other times action would accompany almost 
every sentence. Head, arms, hands, feet, the whole frame 
would vibrate and tremble as the subject or the audience, 
or both, stirred him. Yet the movement, emphatic as it 
was, never seemed to overlay the speech. It was always 
subordinate and passing. 

His gestures at times were deliberately illustrative, and 
not due merely to the vehemence of his utterance. Once 
in a railway carriage he said to one of his leading Officers, 
‘My arms are not long enough to reach both rich and poor.’ 
He stretched his arms out to their full length, and said, 
‘When I am in touch with the poor ’—bringing one hand 
down to the floor of the carriage— I am out of touch with 
the rich ’—and the other hand went towards the carriage 
roof—‘ and when I am in touch with the rich, I lose touch 
with the poor.’ And then, letting both hands drop, he drew 
himself up and said, as though thinking aloud, ‘ I very much 
doubt whether God Almighty’s arms are long enough.’ 
Something of that kind was frequently his platform method 
too. 


20 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


His illustrations were innumerable, but they were not 
mere attachments to his addresses, like spangles on a gar- 
ment. They were woven into the texture, so that it became 
almost impossible to recall the illustration without remem- 
bering the truth which it had been chosen to enforce. The 
illustration itself, without any subsequent embroidery, con- 
veyed its lesson. The same was often true of his texts, for 
though his texts were frequently no more than doorways 
through which he entered upon some great principle or 
truth, he saw to it that they were deeply set in the minds 
of his hearers. I shall never forget the effect upon great 
audiences of the repetition of texts such as, ‘ This year thou 
shalt die’; ‘ The great day of His wrath is come, who shall be 
able to stand’; ‘ Serve the Lord with gladness’ ; ‘ Be sure 
your sin will find you out’; ‘ Blessed are the pure in 
heart’; ‘ And the flood came, and took them all away.’ 

With his gift of declamation and appeal was also the 
ability to explain and reason. Here is an extract from an 
address to the ungodly : 


Alas, alas, a great many people meglect Salvation. What does 
that mean—what is it to neglect ? Well, it does not imply that you 
should hate it. Some people do hate it. I suppose they have met 
with humbugs who have professed it; perhaps they have had 
hypocrites round about them; perhaps they have had some 
servants who were hypocrites, or they have had masters who 
were hypocrites, and so they say every one is a hypocrite. 
Don’t say that. Oh, my God, what hypocrites there are! But, 
thank God, there are a crowd of realities. Iamareality. I am not 
a humbug; and there are crowds about us who are not hypocrites. 
You need not hate religion in order to neglect it. 

You need not be like the Frenchman who said he wished he had 
a ladder long enough to reach to the Throne of God and a knife 
strong enough that he could plunge it into the heart of the Almighty. 
He hated God, but you don’t hate God. 

You need not hate God to neglect Salvation, you need not 
persecute His people (you must not persecute the Salvationists), you 
need not commit those vulgar sins, to neglect Salvation. It does not 
follow that you should be a drunkard or a harlot or a cheat. You 
have nothing to do but ignore Him; turn your back on Him; turn 
your back on Calvary; don’t take any notice; give yourself up to 
the world ; just treat this Salvation as if it was not there. 

Look at that man yonder; look at him going down the river. 
There he is going down in a boat with Niagara beyond. He has got 


THE PROPHET 21 


out into the stream; the rapids have got hold of the boat, and 
down he goes. He need not pull at the oars; he has nothing to do 
but to be still; to go on with his sleep; to go on with his novel. He 
is going—going—-going ; my God! he is gone over, and he never 
pulled at an oar. That is the way people are damned: they go 
on; they are preoccupied; they are taken up; they have no 
time ; they don’t think; they neglect Salvation, and they are lost. 

Although he did not care for the poets, he was himself 
a master of one of their arts, that of repetition. His 
dramatic repetitions would sometimes give a startling 
rhythm to his utterance. In some discourses the use of 
one word over and over again seemed to proclaim the whole 
message. In depicting the scene before the chief priests 
when they refused the return of the thirty pieces of silver, 
he would say, ‘ And Judas—Judas—JuDAS went out and 
hanged himself.’ Or in an address on the downfall of Sam- 
son he would flash the question out upon his hearers: 
‘What is your Delilah—YOUR Delilah?’ Once when he 
was addressing a great working-class audience in Wales he 
pointed to his old-time supporter who was seated by him 
on the platform, and said, ‘ Mr. Cory’s motto for the thirty 
years I have known him has been COALS—COALS—COALS. 
And my motto has been SoULS—SOULS—SOULS.’ The effect 
upon an audience in a coal district was far greater than the 
words in cold print can convey. 

His sensationalism cannot be denied. He adopted it 
when it seemed to be the best lever wherewith to prise open 
the insensitive mind. The aim of his sensationalism was to 
startle and shock the people whom an ordinary appeal about 
their danger or the evil of their sins, would leave unmoved. 
He used the method with the same deliberateness as he would 
have raised his voice in speaking to the partially deaf, or 
warning the inmates of a burning building. The sensational 
image, too, generally carried its own lesson. He would 
picture Lot going out to warn his sons-in-law on the last 
night in Sodom, and would turn up his coat-collar, and 
seize somebody’s hat which happened to be on the platform, 
to suggest a man going out on a disagreeable but an imperious 
errand, and the whole audience would be given the feeling of 
the dark night, the knocking at the door, the coming doom, 


22 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


and then the hollow laughter of the young men—how it all 
went home! Or he would depict with dramatic power 
Ananias, who, having told his story, is waiting for Sapphira 
to come and tell hers! Or, again, it would be a representa- 
tion of the various classes of sinners suffering their doom in 
the regions of the lost, and among them one counting some- 
thing, always counting, counting, and the audience would 
hold its breath while he himself counted: ‘ One—two— 
three—four—five ’—I have seen thousands of people trans- 
fixed as the counting proceeded— ten—eleven—twelve— 
thirteen ’—you could have heard the drop of the proverbial 
pin—‘ twenty-eight—twenty-nine—thirty— . . . why, it is 
Judas!’ The impression was never to be forgotten. 

His humour was also a great resource. It was of varied 
quality, sometimes caustic and dangerous, even wounding, 
at others a lambent fire. Occasionally, it must be confessed, 
the humorous touch seemed incon¢-vous, but no one could 
deny the immense power of this flashing scimitar up to the 
very last in breaking down the stiffness of an audience. 

In the earlier days of The Army, when he had to face 
audiences which were uproarious to the last degree, this gift 
was in very truth a godsend. Not often could there be found 
a man able to make good-humoured fun of people at the 
very moment when they were in ecstasies of enjoyment 
because they thought they were making fun of him! But 
his humour, like his other oratorical stratagems, had always 
its deeper purpose. He would at one moment have an 
audience on the crest of a wave of rampant merriment, when, 
in an instant, like the swift flight of a bird over the waters, 
out would come the truth he wanted them to see. 

So much for the method and manner. What of the 
substance ? William Booth’s subjects were nearly always 
heart subjects. Some of his critics have denied him the 
philosophic mind, and others have found fault with the lack 
of scientific range in his preaching, but his great work could 
never have been done along that line. He did not neglect 
reason in his audiences, but reasoned with them of sin, and 
of righteousness, and of judgment—always of judgment— 
and the evil heart of rebellion and unbelief in them was ever 


THE PROPHET 23 


before him. He did not stand before the upturned faces of 
thousands in order to spin out a philosophic theology or 
to make abstract pronouncements based on questionable 
information. He was a messenger to the heart of mankind 
—a courier taking the most direct route, and making all 
possible haste. His great appeal was to the conscience. 
He believed that in every individual there was a judgment 
seat, continually approving or condemning; and to that 
inward tribunal he appealed, reminding men also of that 
solemn bar of God, at which they would one day appear. 
The larger and more miscellaneous his audience, the more 
simple did he set himself to become. His vocabulary was 
the vocabulary of the common people. Clear, direct, vigor- 
ous, simple. He scarcely used an expression which would 
puzzle the most ignorant. It was a dictum of his: ‘ Use 
words that Mary Ann will understand, and you will be sure 
to make yourself plain to her mistress ; whereas if you speak 
only to her mistress, you will very likely miss her, and 
Mary Ann as well.’ 

When speaking to his Staff, particularly those in his 
closer confidence, he did not always admit the same neces- 
sity, and his thought then moved along other planes, and 
occasionally he would make ventures of a speculative kind. 
Those who imagined that his simplicity was the mark of 
intellectual narrowness would have been amazed had they 
studied the range and diversity of subjects upon which he 
spoke with knowledge and force, and often with challenging 
originality. The problems with which The Salvation Army 
came to deal in later years were of extraordinary variety ; 
they called for counsel or direction on almost every subject 
touching the life of mankind. I do not say that the Founder 
was equally at home on every topic, but I always felt that 
he had something fresh and important to say, the fruit of 
his shrewd observation of men and things, as well as of the 
Wisdom that cometh from above. On such diverse subjects 
as Socialism, the Poor Law, Hydropathy, children and 
Sunday-schools, marriage and divorce, public advertising, 
the intensive cultivation of the land, missionary propaganda, 
emigration, colonization, the training of children, crimin- 


24 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


ology, congregational singing, housing, thrift, public morals 
temperance, government, education, discipline, on these and 
many others he spoke, if not ex cathedra at all events with 
understanding ; and besides these, he dealt, of course, with 
homiletic and theological subjects unnumbered. 

But versatile as he was in his lectures and other addresses, 
it is as a preacher of Jesus Christ and His Salvation, with a 
direct and arresting message, that he will be most remem- 
bered in all the lands he visited. His preaching was barbed. 
Its purpose was not merely to instruct or edify, still less to 
tickle the ears, but to bring men to decision on the most 
momentous questions which can engage the human mind. 
Its aim was as definite as the speech of a counsel to a jury. 
His earnestness, his deep yearning for souls, his profound 
sympathy with sinners, were always uppermost—and lower- 
most. This was so apparent that it broke down the ramparts 
of hostile or critical audiences. What he said was so 
obviously a part of himself that he disarmed his critics, who 
then and there began to believe in him; and having gone 
thus far, he carried many further still, until they responded 
to his message. He had the wonderful gift of establishing 
what we call ‘ connexions’ with his audiences, so that an 
enormous proportion of those present at any one time had 
the feeling that he knew them individually ; that their 
griefs and passions were an open book to him; and, above 
all, that he was vividly awake to their sins and sorrows. 
He talked all the time as one who knew them. He probed 
their unspoken problems so that each auditor could say, as 
multitudes did say, ‘ He is describing me!’ 

One other thing remains to be said. William Booth 
was not only a great preacher; he was one of the greatest 
of preacher-makers. He spoke not only with his own voice, 
but through the men and women whom he selected and 
encouraged—often apparently the most unpromising mouth- 
pieces—to drive home the word and the testimony. He 
not only talked himself of the eternal verities, but he set 
other men talking of them. His tongue is now silent, but 
theirs is heard, and heard in every quarter of the globe. 
He, being dead, yet speaketh, 


IV 
DISTURBERS OF THE PEACE 


DURING one year—1882—the number of Soldiers of The 
Salvation Army who were known to have been knocked 
down or otherwise brutally assaulted in the United Kingdom 
was 642. More than one-third of them were women. In 
addition, twenty-three children suffered. Some of these 
people were injured for life. And all because they attended 
religious meetings in their own buildings or in the open air. 
In that same year sixty of our buildings were practically 
wrecked by the rabble. There was no redress. We could 
obtain neither protection nor reparation. 

Yet the most persistent and unrelenting opposition that 
The Salvation Army had to encounter in what we sometimes 
call the lawless years came less from the drinking saloons 
than from the parsonages. The children of this world were 
for once outdone in malevolence by the children of light ! 
Always the chief opposition to The Army was from the 
Churches; less so in the United States and the overseas 
Dominions than in the Old Country ; more so, perhaps, in 
Germany, Holland, and Switzerland even than in Great 
Britain. 

It has died down just now; or what remains is like the 
sullen embers on the hearth when the night is far gone. 
But the passage of thirty, forty, or more, years does little 
to subdue the just indignation which it is surely right to 
feel at opposition from sources so unexpected, and taking 
so malignant a form. Every conceivable calumny was 
spread abroad against us. From the Founder down to the 
latest Convert, or, for that matter, down to the members 
of the last Sabbath day’s congregations, no one was safe 
from these astonishing and often scurrilous aspersions. 


25 


26 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


Every evil which could be imagined was told of us; and 
the tellers were, not the denizens of the pothouse, who, 
generally speaking, only repeated and coarsened these 
fables, but those whom we called our ‘ fellow Christians ’ ! 

What recklessness in indictment as well as exuberance 
in imagination was required in those who hashed up such 
a charge as that our Meetings promoted promiscuous 
immorality ! That accusation was started by none other 
than certain bishops of the Anglican Church. The right 
reverend gentlemen were challenged to prove it, which 
they never did, and never could, and in the end they were 
screwed up to the point of making a milk-and-water apology. 
Some of them afterwards wanted the Founder and the rest 
of us to come in and strengthen the Church to which they 
belonged, but for that foul and baseless charge they never 
expressed in public one word of real contrition. 

It was deans and vicars who went about making state- 
ments that we were after the poor people’s money, and 
that presently we should be off with it ‘to America!’ 
It was the leading lights of Nonconformist bodies who 
warned their flocks against the Founder as a Jesuit in dis- 
guise and Catherine Booth as his fellow-conspirator! It 
was the reverend editor of one of the Christian papers who 
denounced what he called our ‘ bacchanalian processions ’ 
and described the Founder as a ridiculous imitation of the 
Pope of Rome. Clergymen who had never been to a meeting 
of The Salvation Army, or spoken to a Salvationist in their 
lives, denounced us from their pulpits and wrote letters of 
ill will in the newspapers. In India, our first mission field, 
it was the Presbyterian missionaries from whom came the 
most bitter and sustained opposition—opposition which 
again and again broke out in open violence. The religious 
Press, in its turn, distinguished itself by the eagerness 
with which it received and printed any story that came 
along to prove that we taught false doctrines, promoted 
irreverence, and encouraged blasphemy, and that the prin- 
cipal result of our work was ‘to bring religion into con- 
tempt.’ 

On the Continent, perhaps the climax of this railing 


DISTURBERS OF THE PEACE a7 


was reached when La Comtesse Gasparin, a Swiss Protestant 
leader of that day, called us liars and cheats. 

In this country the denunciation reached its height—of 
absurdity—when the great Earl of Shaftesbury solemnly 
stated that, as the result of much study, he had come to 
the conclusion that The Salvation Army was clearly Anti- 
christ ; whereupon some silly admirer put the cap on his 
lordship’s absurdity by discovering that the letters in the 
name of William Booth made ‘ 666,’ the mark of the beast ! * 
There was no more to be said. 

It was much the same with our Social Work. Apart 
from poor Huxley and one or two other infidels, the only 
people who attacked the Social Work at its inauguration 
were the religious people. They would have wrecked the 
project if they could, but, fortunately, the tide of sympathy 
in the nation was too strong for them. One West End 
vicar, a leader of the evangelicals, declared that we were 
getting money for social work while we intended to spend 
it on something else. A prominent parson in the East End 
wrote in ‘The Times’ that what we were really seeking to 
do was to ‘sweat’ the poor people whom we had rescued 
from the gutters and set to work, in order to make a money 
profit out of their distress. 

A well-known and widely esteemed dean rushed into the 
papers to suggest that our borrowing money for the erection 
of our buildings would prove another South Sea bubble! 
Another clergyman mocked at us for feeding and warming - 
the wretched creatures who spent their miserable nights on 
the London bridges and embankments, and said with quite 
convincing effrontery that we had brought them there 
ourselves ! 

4 Eh bien: Nous vous le déclarons, A VOUS (General Booth) les Ames 
que vos insanités ont éloignées du Christ; les indifférents dont vos 
travestissements de l’Evangile ont fait des ennemis de l’Evangile; les 
incrédules dont vos boniments (Charlatanries) ignobles ont fait des blas- 
phémateurs ; les abusés de par votre jésuitisme, les asservis de par votre 
autocratie, les égarés de par vos sacriléges prétentions d’inspiration divine, 
les suvres chrétiennes entravées par vos exhibitions de foire, les séduits 
que vous arrachez aux roulis certaines pour les mener aux fondricres : 
de tout cela, de tous ceux-la vous rendrez compte devant le tréne de Dieu. 


—From ‘ Lisez et Jugez, Armée—soidisant—du Salut,’ by La Comtesse 
Gasparin, Geneva, 1883. 


28 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


If the din of battle thus shook the windows of Head- 
quarters, what about the local fights, where malice often 
took more petty forms, and the persecuted were less able 
to meet the onslaught ? Rarely anywhere in the country 
did black cloth—whether State Church or Free Church— 
come to the help of Salvationist blue. The parsons, of 
course, whatever their sect, were always ‘ shocked’ that 
our poor people should be bullied and injured, but they 
seldom said so publicly or gave us any support when we 
were down. In fact, they seemed nearly always, for one 
reason or another, to take the opposite side. They struck 
up an alliance—no doubt fortuitous—with ‘ beer’ against 
us. In their respectable way they seconded the efforts of 
the baser sort.? 

The men who tripped up our processions, who insulted 
and assaulted our women, who threw sticks and stones, 
not to mention dead cats and dogs and the most offensive 
refuse, when a Salvationist cap appeared on the street ; 
who refused us even the peaceful burial of our dead; who 
invaded our Halls and smashed our furniture and other 
property, and generally treated us as lawful game, were in 
many cases men known to the police. The‘ skeleton army ’ 
and other organized opposition which came out against us 
were marshalled from the beer-houses, and generally led by 


1 No doubt in some instances they were misled by the Government of 
the day. In a case known as the Stamford Appeal the Magistrates had 
become so frightened by the violence of the roughs that they appealed 
to the Home Secretary asking what they should do. Sir Vernon Harcourt 
replied in terms which drew upon him the severe and merited rebuke of 
practically every important newspaper in the country, Conservative or 
Liberal. He stated that the Salvationist processions, ‘ not being illegal in 
themselves cannot. . . be legally prevented, but where they provoke 
antagonism and lead to riotous collisions, and where the peace of the 
town would be endangered if they are allowed to continue, the Magis- 
trates should by every means in their power endeavour to prevent them’ ! 
He recommended that in such circumstances the Chief Constable should 
lay before them a sworn statement to that effect, and then the Magistrates 
should issue notices prohibiting them, and if necessary use force to pre- 
vent them. In other words, we were to be dealt with on the principle 
of local option. The question whether peaceable subjects of the Crown 
were to be allowed to exercise their legal right and to walk in procession 
was to be referred to the good pleasuve of the roughs. This monstrous 
pronouncement presently reacted greatly in our favour, but at the moment 
it was a grievous infliction, and greatly increased disorder throughout the 
country. 


DISTURBERS OF THE PEACE 29 


well-known men of evil repute. The source and character 
of the opposition alone might have reassured the most 
hesitating as to where he should bestow his sympathy. But 
I doubt whether a couple of score of ministers of religion 
the country over had a word to say in our support. Rarely 
did a note of encouragement ring out in the churches. Yet 
we were fighting for freedom to proclaim the same Saviour 
whom they honoured. We found that there was liberty in 
the streets for the infidel and the anarchist to hold forth 
day and night, liberty for the creatures of vice to parade, 
liberty for the patrons of the lowest music-hall to queue 
up, liberty for the cheap-jacks and the ‘ Punch and Judy’ 
shows, liberty for the barrels of beer to be rolled over the 
pavements. Our fight, or one part of it, was just this: to 
ensure that the streets and open spaces should be free also 
for the feet of those who were seeking the broken and the 
lost, the feet of them that brought the good tidings of a 
Saviour’s love. 

Why had we to fight alone? Why had we against us, 
not only the publicans and sinners, but also, very often, the 
religious leaders? Well, many good folk were, no doubt, 
afraid that if we were left in freedom it would lead to un- 
comfortable consequences for what they called religion. 
They were right. We were a menace to the ‘ comfortable ’ 
worship of the day. Our people’s zeal and joy put to shame 
the religion which consisted mostly in a listless rote. The 
new spirit which is seen in the churches all over the world 
to-day is distinctly traceable to the stimulus which 
The Salvation Army has imparted in its many conflicts. 

Perhaps a ‘ rock of offence’ in those days was that we 
aimed at definite and immediate results. We have always 
believed that the Gospel of Christ proclaimed in the demon- 
stration of the Spirit and with power ought to prove, must 
prove, visibly as well as in the heart, its Divine efficacy. 
What indeed can be the use of any religious speaking unless 
it secures some 1mmedtate results. The fact that such results 
were seen continually presented, of course, a great contrast 
to the outcome of much of the religious effort of that day, 
and deepened some of the opposition from religious circles. 


30 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


The trouble with the religion of that day was that it 
was so egregiously respectable. Much of this spirit has 
passed away, I hope for ever, although even within the last 
few years our Officers have been refused admission to well- | 
known places of worship at the hour of service, because 
they were accompanied by poor, unkempt, and broken 
creatures whom they wanted to bless. Yet, after all, it really 
was those people whom Christ came to save. The trouble 
with The Army was that it was not respectable. And so the 
proprieties and politenesses of the religious world took 
fright and began to rear. Indeed, if I may be permitted the 
figure, began to kick ! 

A deeper reason for the obloquy which met us was that 
we were intruders. ‘Ian Maclaren,’ in his later years, said 
that he ‘ liked The Salvation Army because it made religion 
where there was no religion before.’ But that was the reason 
why many people did not like it. It broke into the Devil’s 
preserves and at the same time disturbed the hitherto 
unruffled calm of religious exercises and lip-service which 
many nice people had mistaken for the religion of Jesus. 

And more—signs and wonders followed it. Things 
unusual began to happen. Things visible. If they were 
not great miracles, they were nevertheless great marvels, 
things which came not by any human reckoning. Whether 
the instances were few or many, they were there. And their 
existence stirred up the ministers and other officials of reli- 
gious bodies quite in the spirit of the Pharisees of old, who 
raised all manner of quibblings in the presence of the man 
born blind who had received his sight. ‘ We are Moses’ 
, disciples. We know that God spake unto Moses: as for 
this fellow, we know not from whence he is.’ _In short, they 
threw cold water on the whole business. 

Perhaps even when all this is said we have not plumbed 
to the ultimate secret of the opposition. Was it that our 
kind of personal religion was different in yet deeper respects 
from much of the religion around us? Ours was a practical 
faith. It appealed to the common mass, and illumined them. 
It offered a spiritual charter to the ecclesiastically disfran- 
chised. It made the dumb speak. It lifted people from the 


DISTURBERS' OF THE PEACE 31 


dunghills. It rebuked those cosy, self-satisfied professors 
who wanted to keep out of sight every sign of the warmth 
and enthusiasm which belong to a heart religion. It per- 
sisted in bringing the facts and claims of religion into the 
open. It was out of season as often as it wasin. It dared 
to say not only that there was One who was ‘ mighty to 
save, but that He did save. It was not ashamed to confess 
that life was full of evil, but it proclaimed also that good 
was coming and would prove stronger than the evil. It 
gave its message through the mouths of quite ‘ vulgar’ 
people—mechanics, domestic servants, factory girls, farm 
labourers! It taught the children to sing for God. It 
even set to heavenly music the voices of the Magdalen and 
the drunkard. It pinked the complacency of conventional 
religion, and shone as a bright light in a gloomy twilight. 
It made the Devil cry out. It disturbed the publicans and 
the brothel-keepers and the gambling gentry and the 
“nasty ’ newspapers. Finally, and perhaps most unforgiv- 
ably, it openly organized a people who really had renounced 
the Devil and all his works, and who separated themselves 
from the pomps and vanities of this wicked world ! 

All this was very disturbing. And if it be an offence to 
bring the impact of spiritual reality upon a religious world 
wedded to forms of worship but too often forgetful of its 
spirit, then undoubtedly we have committed that offence, 
and the dim-religious-light sort of Christian could not and 
cannot abide us. 

I was—indeed, I am now—often very sorry that things 
have had to be turned upside down. But to act, as we do, 
and as we have done, is no impish indulgence on our part ; 
we do not upset people for fun, or spite, or to earn notoriety. 
But there are the facts. I cannot deny them. Because we 
were what we were, the religion which is always hesitating 
about what should be believed, the religion which is made 
up half of hope and half of fear, the religion which mis- 
takes refinement and civilization for hfe—abundant life in 
Christ, or thinks that fine preaching or good music and ornate 
ceremonial can somehow be a substitute for surrender to 
God and separation from the world and the service of others 


32 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
—that religion was bound by its very nature to oppose 
The Salvation Army. And it did. 

* x * x 


I have not written here the whole story. There was a 
brighter side to all this, and it shall be told on another 


page. 


V 
FRIENDS IN NEED 


It is pleasant to turn from this rather dreary record of 
abuse and persecution to the few friends—men of out- 
standing spiritual influence with their fellows—who were 
raised up in the Churches to help The Army forward in 
those early days. Of such friends some continued to the 
end faithful in their friendship. They had eyes to see the 
spirit which was working inwardly among our people. 
However the exterior may have perplexed them, they could 
see beneath it. These, having once espoused our cause, 
never deserted us. The attitude of others varied with the 
passage of time. For a year or two they would do valiant 
defensive work, and then we found that in some respect 
or other they were offended. But even with regard to these 
we rejoiced, and felt when they had rendered us some signal 
service, that as Mordecai said of Esther, they had come to 
the kingdom for a time like this. 

Among these latter I think that my first memory would 
be of C. H. Spurgeon. My first touch with him was con- 
nected with a visit which the Founder paid to one of his 
Pastors’ College festivals early in the seventies. Spurgeon, 
who made a very nice reference to his guest, struck me as 
a man very conscious of the fact that he had reached his 
zenith, and desperately anxious to continue where he was. 
Yet that could not really have been the case, because he 
maintained in subsequent years a high rate of progress. 

It was at about the time of this visit that Spurgeon took 
occasion to mention the work of the Christian Mission in 
the ‘Sword and Trowel.’! After referring to Mr. Booth as 
one of the centres of holy activity stirring the masses of 

4 December, 1870. 
D 33 


34 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


London, he quoted from our ‘ Mission Magazine ’ the expe- 
rience of two evangelists of the Mission who had had brought 
out against them, to silence their speaking, a whole brass 
band, and Spurgeon added this comment : 


What would some of our brethren have done in such a case? 
If a baby cries they are utterly disconcerted, and a little noise from 
the Sabbath School children makes them drop the thread of their 
discourse! Puling evangelists would do well to try Whitechapel in 
the open-air, and they would probably say with a certain brother 
(of the Christian Mission), ‘ I find the work very trying to the voice ; 
the rumbling of the buses and carts in the Mile End Road drowns 
the voice unless backed by a strong pair of lungs.’ We are afraid 
they would hardly have the grace to add, ‘ The Lord strengthen us 
for this great work.’ 


Later on Spurgeon gave his lecture on ‘ Candles‘ at our 
Hall in Whitechapel, and I was more impressed with him 
than I had been on the former occasion. Later still I heard 
him preach in a tent in Limehouse to a fine concourse of 
people, numbering from three to four thousand. I do not 
think that I have ever heard a more beautiful voice. It 
was a melody with an immense scale of tones. Moreover, 
I thought his general manner on the platform exceedingly 
impressive and attractive. I had heard the story of the 
child who was taken by his mother to hear Spurgeon preach, 
and after a quarter of an hour or so whispered, ‘ Mother, 
is Mr. Spurgeon speaking to me?’ and I realized, as I lis- 
tened to him myself, that that story could be quite true. 
I was, however, disappointed with his matter. It struck 
me—as his printed sermons have also done—as being a 
careful erection from the surface rather than an upheaval 
from the depths. Yet here, again, I must have been wrong, 
for there were depths in him. I regretted, nay, I resented 
his style off the platform also. He arrived at the gathering 
I have referred to in a fine carriage, smoking a cigar. His 
remark that he smoked to the honour and glory of God 
is one of those oft-quoted sayings which have done infinite 
harm to the world, putting into the mouth of many a youth 
not only a poisonous weed but a flippant and irreligious 
apology. 

More than once Spurgeon spoke up for The Army. His 


FRIENDS IN NEED 35 


Calvinistic soul did not like our Holiness teaching, and he 
condemned it in his rough and ready fashion; but he 
always recognized that souls were being brought to the 
truth, and his own early sensationalisms saved him from 
prejudice against our new and unconventional methods for 
winning the attention of the multitude. He became our 
advocate with regard to some of the very measures which 
most offended the sentiment of ‘the Christian public.’ It 
should be added that his kindly feelings were shared by 
his son Thomas, both when in New Zealand and while, 
later on, he was in charge of his father’s church. 

Of Spurgeon’s great contemporary in the Nonconformist 
pulpit I have some pleasant recollections. Dr. Parker was 
the first preacher of any note, either in London or the 
provinces, to invite of his own motion my dear mother to 
occupy his pulpit, and that at a time when hardly a woman’s 
voice was heard in the Christian temples of this country.! 
Now and again during the stormy years Parker spoke out 
boldly for us with that defiant note to which the City Temple 
so frequently rang. Later on he invited me once or twice 
to take one of his Thursday services, and I have often re- 
gretted that circumstances prevented me from accepting 
his invitation. During Dr. Parker’s last illness my father 
paid him a visit, and spoke of him to me with deep interest 
and sympathy. The two men had a happy time together, 
conscious as both of them were that soon their stern battles 
would be done. They had a likeness also in this, that each 
mourned a deeply loved wife, and they were drawn to speak 
to one another of the reunions awaiting them on the other side. 

Among other reminiscences of Dr. Parker is one which, 
though of a different order, is not without interest. In his 
vestry a small Committee of influential men was discussing 
a meeting we proposed to hold in the City Temple in con- 
nexion with the Purity Campaign of 1885. Some question 
arose as to whether a certain Labour leader, at that time a 
bold and active figure, should be asked to speak. He had 
been already approached, and had expressed his willingness 


1It was also at the City Temple many years later, in 1889, that 
Mrs. Catherine Booth preached her last sermon. 


30 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


to come—‘ but, mind, none of your damned religion!’ 
Some one put it to Parker at. last definitely whether the 
Labour leader should be invited. ‘ Oh, let him come,’ was 
the Doctor’s reply ; and then, in his deepest tones, ‘ Yes, 
let him come, but, mind, none of his damned infidelity !° 

Of other Nonconformists who befriended us I mention 
three, all of Bristol, and each of them honoured in his 
denomination by being elected to the chair of the Union. 
These were Urijah Thomas and Arnold Thomas, both of 
them Congregationalists, and Richard Glover, the Baptist. 
Urijah Thomas went out in the processions with us, and 
attended the early Bristol services, where he himself was 
greatly blessed. And I must name also Dr. J. B. Paton, 
the head of the Congregational Institute for Theological and 
Missionary Studies at Nottingham. That he was ‘ one of 
the right sort ’’ may be seen from a letter which he wrote to 
my father after the death of my sister, Mrs. Booth-Tucker . 


I have throughout a long life always felt it to be one of the 
highest privileges of that life to stand by your side wherever it was 
possible and to aid by prayers and fullest sympathy one who has 
been in our times the chosen Apostle of our Glorious Redeeming 
Lord, to do a work which scarce any other of His great Apostles 
has been permitted todo .. . . and now when you are smitten by 
this storm of trial, what can I more than stand again by your side, 
offering you a heart full of loving sympathy. FEternally united! 
Death to you and meisnomore. They are with you here, and, oh! - 
how soon you will be with them there. And then may I still be at 
your side, and at the side of her, the Mother of your Army, who 
bade me good night, and told me to meet her in the Morning. 


Ever your affectionate and faithful friend, 
J.B. Patron: 


We had also some helpers in Scotland. Dr. Stalker 
greatly appreciated my mother’s writings, and was very 
warm and cordial to the Founder ; and among other friends 
in the north were Dr. Denney and Dr. Alexander Whyte of 
Free St. George’s, Edinburgh. These were all true friends 
when friends were few. 

The Army has had, and still has, many valued friends 
among Methodists. A host of names comes to mind—names 
like Alexander McCaulay ; Bishop Taylor, of California ; 


FRIENDS IN NEED 37 


Luke Tyreman, and T. B. Stephenson (of the National 
Children’s Home), as well as many generous Methodist 
laymen, Henry Reed, William MacArthur, John Cory ; James 
Barlow, of Bolton; William Walker, of Whitehaven ; 
William Gooderham, of Toronto; Mary Fowler, of Liver- 
pool; Dr. Wood, of Southport, among others. 

The Church of England long remained aloof from 
The Army. Anglicanism could not somehow get us into 
focus. All the same, there appeared here and there a 
splendid friend amongst its clergy. Some comparatively 
early sympathizers among those who are entitled to be 
called great Churchmen are mentioned in another chapter, 
but there were others who will always be remembered as 
friends in need. One was E. W. Moore, then minister of 
Brunswick Chapel, Marylebone, and another D. B. Hankin, 
who was vicar of St. Jude’s, Mildmay. These men 
attended our services and wrote warmly in our defence in 
their Church papers, both under their own name and under 
a nom-de-plume. I specially rejoiced in their advocacy, 
because it helped to counteract the false theories spread 
abroad, chiefly by members of their own Church, with 
regard to our higher life teaching. 

Among the other brave spirits of that time who took a 
definite share in the open-air fighting was one who held 
what is known as a perpetual curacy at one of the West End 
chapels. I recall that on more than one occasion he sallied 
forth carrying an open umbrella bearing striking words of 
warning plastered upon it, and not only did he carry this 
to Salvation Army meetings, but he walked about with it 
in Hyde Park to the blessing of many souls. 

Material help has also been extended to us from time 
to time by well-to-do men. Once in a Holiness Meeting, 
during a time of great stress and poverty at Headquarters, 
{ mentioned that we needed sympathy and help. The next 
morning, almost before I began work, a Church of England 
parson who had been present at the meeting was at Head- 
quarters, and said, ‘How much do you want? Would a 
loan of £3,000 be of any use?’ I replied that while it would 
not cover our need, it would certainly be of use ; whereupon 


38 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


he said, ‘I have securities at my bank which will produce 
just that amount as a loan. I will send it up to you. But 
I want to make one condition, that you do not send me any 
sort of acknowledgment or allow the matter to be men- 
tioned between us until you are ready to repay me ! ’ 

Then there was the late Frank S. Webster, afterwards 
Prebendary of St. Paul’s and rector of All Souls, Langham 
Place, who was a staunch friend. He came under The Army's 
influence while at Oxford. I have more than once seen him 
walking in our processions, singing the praises of God, and 
plastered with mud from head to foot. Benjamin Waugh, 
the children’s protector, was another who unflinchingly 
stood by us during the purity prosecution, though he risked 
losing many of his wealthy supporters by so doing. 

Others who must be named in this connexion are Bishop 
Lightfoot, of Durham, Bishop Moorhouse, of Manchester, 
Dean Hole, of Rochester, Bishop Welldon, now Dean of 
Durham, and Canon Scott-Holland, afterwards of St. Paul’s. 
Farrar and Wilberforce, of Westminster, are the subject of 
more extended reference elsewhere. A few clergymen took 
a share of the brickbats, and came to our meetings and spoke 
encouragingly to our people. They were great exceptions, 
it is true, but there were these exceptions. Among the 
encouragers whose names recur to me was that curious 
mixture of this world and the next known as ‘ Hang 
Theology’ Rogers, rector of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate. 
Rogers was naturally a very attractive man, a really good 
town specimen of the shooting and fox-hunting parson ; 
and one of his persistent endeavours—in which he never 
succeeded—was to get the General to go down with him to 
the Derby ! : 

There was also dear old William Pennefather, the 
founder of the Mildmay Conferences, who came down to 
Whitechapel quite in the early days, before his Conferences 
had removed from Barnet, where they began. Pennefather 
was the first man I ever saw embrace my father in public ! 
He created no end of a sensation by kissing him before the 
people in a crowded meeting. 

Now, why did such men as I have mentioned help us 


FRIENDS IN NEED 39 


at all? It is scarcely possible, of course, for another to 
analyse their feelings and motives. Nevertheless, some 
things which seemed to be common to them all, or nearly 
all, throw light on the matter. They were, on the whole, 
drawn to us by our high standards of personal religion. 
Even when they could not quite accept our doctrine 
or did not quite see the necessity of imposing on them- 
selves or on others our self-denying ordinances, they still 
delighted in our testimony. The best of them felt and 
specially rejoiced that the witness was forthcoming, not 
from the members of some gifted coterie of rare minds, 
but from the common people, that the spirit of Pentecost 
was in the shabby room, and had fallen on the poor and 
the simple and the despised. In general we may explain 
their espousal of our despised and rejected cause by the 
fact of our religion—definite—aggressive—hot religion. 
Any number of good people when spoken to about The 
Salvation Army to-day will say, ‘ Yes, it is doing a great 
work.’ What these men saw was something more than that. 
The Army might or might not be doing a great work, but 
The Army was a great thing ! 

It should be added that many of those who came for- 
ward and helped us in this way had in their own personal 
lives received new power through the instrumentality of 
one or other of our agencies. As I go about the world people 
still say to me—not Army people: ‘It was at such and 
such a meeting of The Army, or through reading such and 
such an Army book, or through hearing such and such a 
Salvationist song, or through coming in contact with such 
and such a soldier, that my hfe was directed to the service 
of the Cross of Christ.’ It was so with them. | 

I think, further, that the opposition which these men 
encountered was of immense service to them. It damped 
the zeal of some, no doubt, but it stiffened the fibre of 
others. They saw in the character of those individuals and 
influences which opposed us a great testimony to the hand 
of God upon us. They differed from us in doctrinal mat- 
ters; they differed about the sacraments, about women’s 
ministry, about many of our methods, but they felt that 


40 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


The Army must possess some essential thing which God 
loved and approved or it would never have found arrayed 
against it in the way it did the world, the flesh, and the 
Devil. The very thing which hopelessly frightened many 
of their co-religionists drew them to us and made them 
valiant in our defence. We owe them much; they helped 
to roll the old chariot along, even though they were not 
always pushing behind with might and main. They were 
auxiliaries of the main attacking Army, freelances wielding 
redoubtable steel. They have their reward. 

One venerable friend who has lately left us I have not 
forgotten, but I have left him till last because his name 
forms such a fitting completion of this honoured roll. 
Dr. Clifford always looked with kindness on The Army. 
Back in the old days, when we had few friends among the 
Nonconformists to say one good word for us, he said many. 
I can never forget his helping hand in the great legal fight 
over the Eagle Tavern. Some of the hatred which fell on 
us fell on him also. Again and again his pulpit has been at 
our disposal. I like to think of him as I last saw him, 
though the shadows were already creeping up the splendid 
hills of his fruitful life. It was the night of my father’s 
wondertul funeral service at Olympia. Near to the repre- 
sentatives of the King and Queen, and among the leading 
men of every Church and religion, was Dr. Clifford, seven 
years the Founder’s junior, his hand raised on high and 
singing with all his might, his eyes filling with tears, as the 
mighty audience burst forth : 


We're marching through Immanuel’s ground, 
And soon shall hear the trumpet sound. 


Dr. Clifford’s power was in his marvellous capacity to 
throw himself body and soul into what he was doing or 
saying. Power on the platform is often falsely put down 
to a special gift of speech, when it really arises, as in his case, 
from a burning and overflowing heart. 

Dr. Clifford should have been a Salvationist ! 


VI 
How THE BUTTONS CAME OFF 


LATE one Sunday night in Whitechapel, when I was about 
twelve or thirteen years of age, I was walking home with 
the Founder when he led me for the first time in my life 
into a drinking saloon. I have never forgotten the effect 
that the scene produced upon me. The place was crowded 
with men, many of them bearing on their faces the marks 
of brutishness and vice, and with women also, dishevelled 
and drunken, in some cases with tiny children in their arms. 
There in that brilliantly lighted place, noxious with the 
fumes of drink and tobacco, and reeking with filth, my 
father, holding me by the hand, met my inquiring gaze and 
said, ‘ Willie, these are our people; these are the people 
I want you to live for and bring to Christ.’ The impression 
never left me. 

The Founder’s struggles in those early and formative 
years were not always with the outward and visible. There 
were more subtle difficulties, questionings, uncertainties, 
hesitations, misgivings. How could it be otherwise ? The 
very foundations of his life were challenged. Many old 
cherished things were already marked to pass away and 
many utterly undreamed-of things were to become new. 
In the result, he gradually came down from the aloofness of 
a semi-ecclesiastical position into that of a man who deemed 
all else of no account if by any means he might win some. 

For a long time he shared many of the notions which 
prevailed in the then religious world with regard to what 
may be called ecclesiastical precedence or order. He be- 
lieved, for example, that there was some superiority in the 
mere fact of being a minister, that the call and separation 
involved in that life really did convey some special grace, 


41 


42 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


that it necessarily set a man apart from the people and put 
a hedge about him. He left Methodism of his own motion. 
It is quite true that, from a certain standpoint, the Methodist 
authorities may be said to have ejected him, but he never 
felt quite happy in putting it only in that way. They 
offered him a circuit, and with a circuit, a home, and salary, 
with no small opportunity to work for the Kingdom of God. 
It is scarcely the whole story to say that he was turned out ! 
On the other hand, it is also true that when he joined the 
Methodist New Connexion there was a distinct understand- 
ing with the authorities of that time that he became one of 
their ministers for evangelistic work, in which he had already 
gained a great measure of success in various parts of the 
country. It was their subsequent refusal of that work 
which brought about the rupture. 

After he broke with the Conference he was immediately 
invited to visit various circuits as Missioner, holding special 
services, and at once had a great measure of success, par- 
ticularly in Cornwall, in the Midlands, and in South Wales. 
Thereupon the ministers who had personally agitated against 
his evangelism within the Church felt that the position 
‘ would be worse than ever ’ if he were allowed to roam about 
the country without any restraint. Accordingly they moved 
their Conference—and with entire success—to close the 
pulpits against any travelling evangelists who were not 
authorized by the Annual Conference. The same resolution 
which closed their doors against William Booth closed them 
also to James Caughey, and to Dr. and Mrs. Palmer, who 
had been instrumental at that time in strengthening many 
of the Nonconformist Churches in the United Kingdom. 
No doubt, some of the opposition which developed in the 
long run against the Booths was originally due to a pre- 
judice against ‘ foreigners,’ the Evangelists just mentioned 
having come from the United States. The very strong, not 
to say bitter, feeling then prevailing against the ministry of 
women, had also to be reckoned with, for Catherine Booth 
had shared in the Founder’s work. 

For two years after the Churches were thus closed against 
him he wandered about the country without a religious 


HOW THE BUTTONS CAME OFF 43 


domicile. Towns in which he had been marvellously used 
_ could offer him nothing except the personal hospitality of 
individuals, which was not what he was seeking. Those 
two years were probably the darkest in his whole life, at 
least from the time of his ordination onwards. Small 
buildings only were available for his services—he who had 
been accustomed to great congregations; and the results 
were, I am afraid, correspondingly disappointing. Finan- 
cially also they were years of very great embarrassment, 
rendered the more so, no doubt, by his independence and 
his delicacy about accepting gifts. Many of his letters 
during this period illustrate the acute personal conflicts 
through which he passed. Mrs. Booth was living mean- 
while with four children in a little house in Yorkshire—her 
husband wandering about the country, separated from her 
sometimes for months at a time. 

Yet this period, dark and perplexing as it was, was a 
period in which, I consider, he was being most marvellously 
fitted for the work which, unknown to him, was awaiting 
his hand in the East End of London; nay, in the ‘ East 
End’ of the world. If he had had to come down straight 
from those crowded buildings, with a thousand or fifteen 
hundred people night after night, with influential ministers 
and leading men of all parties on his platforms, and streams 
of penitents just below them—if he had had to come down 
from all that immediately to the cold and tumble-down tent 
or the little barren skittle-ground of Whitechapel and the 
Mile-End Waste, and to submit himself to the tender mer- 
cies of a London mob, the change might have been too much 
even for his brave spirit. They were wilderness years, but 
they were years in which the reality of his call was being 
proved in his own consciousness and his fibre stiffened for 
conflict and conquest. They were years of‘enduring and of 
hardness. 

All this time, notwithstanding that the ceremonial trap- 
pings of his Church life had been, if not torn away, at all 
events considerably loosened—the buttons coming off, as 
Carlyle would have put it—there still remained with him a 
haunting sense of superiority or separateness as a minister 


44 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


which was a constant embarrassment. As he himself said, 
it was a long while before he could divest himself of his white 
tie and his black clothes, and his umbrella, and come right 
down to the common people as one of themselves. 

What was substantially the same difficulty in other 
aspects of his own work and experience appeared again and 
again during the earliest developments of The Army. | 
remember his addressing on one occasion a congregation of 
twelve hundred or so at Whitechapel, the large majority 
of those present being utterly godless, many of them openly 
vicious. He was making only the most trifling impression, 
do what he would. But when presently he called upon an 
old man—a kind of gipsy hawker, who was converted from 
a life of open wickedness a few weeks before—to speak aiter 
him, a wonderful impression upon the throng was created 
by that man’s words, bungling as no doubt they were. He 
saw it and felt it, and he said to me afterwards, ‘ Willie, 
I shall have to burn all those old sermons of mine, and go 
in for the gipsy’s.’ And yet those ‘old sermons,’ or old 
swords, aS we might well call them, had done wonderful 
execution in the former days, and he was not a little attached 
to them. But he found, as he wrote later on, ‘ that ordinary 
working-men in their corduroys and bowler hats could 
command attention from their own class which was refused 
point-blank to me with my theological terms and superior 
knowledge.’ Thus in the methods of The Salvation Army, 
as they gradually took shape, there was so much that was 
contrary to his preconceived notions, that perhaps the great- 
est struggle of all in the making of The Army was the 
struggle within himself. 

To a large extent Catherine Booth was under the same 
influences, but with her the conflict was rather in the intel- 
lectual than in the ecclesiastical arena. She had in those 
early days no little difficulty, for instance, in reconciling 
herself to the employment of young and untrained minds 
to convey the great messages of divine things. Should she 
approve or disapprove when it was proposed to call simple 
and ignorant people away from their homes, impose upon 
them a rather stern discipline, and involve them in a wan- 


HOW THE BUTTONS CAME OFF 45 


dering life of poverty in order that they might minister of 
the sacred things to the multitude ? What advice was she 
to give when servant girls and ’prentice lads seemed to be 
so manifestly shaping for leadership ? She went through 
no small measure of humbling in realizing that, after all, 
these rough and untutored spirits might be chosen vessels of 
Ministering Grace, worthy to take their places beside her 
more carefully prepared and more precious earthenware. 

But with her, as well as with him, these traditions and 
hesitations, so natural, nay, so honourable in them both, 
were overcome by the tremendous passion for souls which 
possessed them, and especially for the souls to whom, if 
they did not actually antagonize them, the Churches made 
little or no appeal. Here, and in their delightful humility, 
was the true secret of their emancipation from many clinging 
prejudices. In their burning love for men, the bonds which 
during twenty years had been wound round them were 
destroyed. Love—love for humamty—found a way. It 
routed, at last, all the fastidiousness alike of temperament, 
association, and habit. The more degraded, the more 
vicious, the more distant and stubborn the people, the more 
fiery became their own zeal, the more steady their own 
pursuit until they were won. William Booth at this time, 
let it be remembered, was not a young fellow of twenty-five 
embarking in a youthful spirit of enterprise on new adven- 
tures. He was forty and mature. 

The growth of The Army brought also struggles of 
another kind. His contemporaries never realized—will pos- 
terity realize >—how often William Booth had to do violence 
to himself. Consider, for example, the government of the 
Organization, and his place init. It was not that he wanted 
to be an autocrat. All his predispositions were the other 
way. Yet from the earliest days of the East End Mission 
there was, I think, always before him the idea that soon or 
later—no matter how reluctant he might feel when the time 
came—he would have to take control of everything. I am 
sometimes asked how it was that for the first thirteen or 
fourteen years of our existence we made comparatively so 
little impression. I honestly think that the reason was that 


46 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


the Founder, after the first two or three years, hesitated, 
chiefly on account of his previous notions of Church govern- 
ment, to take the lead. He was still in thought—or rather 
in attitude of mind—a good deal of a Methodist. And 
although later in life the influences of his early years in the 
Church of England were clearly seen, he would still say, 
‘there is one God, and John Wesley is His prophet.’ He 
had always in his ears an echo of the impact which 
Methodism had made upon the world. It was only natural 
that John Wesley’s example should influence him. He felt 
himself as time went on to be placed in circumstances in 
many important respects similar to those in which Wesley 
had ultimately been placed, and his position was very like 
Wesley’s in one respect at least, that people would come to 
him and say, ‘ Take us under your care. We have loosed 
our anchors.’ 

For some time he held back from taking this absolute 
control. It was not only the natural diffidence of a refined 
spirit which held him back ; the habits and training of his 
previous life were against such a course. We had for some 
years, for regulating the local work, the usual organization 
of Elders and other meetings composed of selected officials 
of the different societies, and in the middle of the seventies 
there came into existence a governing body known as the 
Annual Conference, with which the Founder freely shared 
his authority and in a less degree his responsibility. But 
the Conference failed, obviously and palpably failed, as 
“government by talk’ generally fails, and there came at 
length a time when he went the whole length in the direction 
of what has often been called his autocracy. The immediate 
crisis which led to this change, so long seen to be approach- 
ing, was the expressed dissatisfaction of many of his most 
effective helpers. They came to him, and said plainly, ‘ We 
gave our lives up to work under you, and those you should 
appoint, rather than under one another.’ ‘ Very well,’ he 
answered, ‘let it be so,’ and took up the burden. Much, if 
not all the pressure of his previous training had to be shaken 
off. It took him twelve years to reach that position, and 
even then there remained an instinctive shrinking from 


HOW THE BUTTONS CAME OFF 47 


much that was involved. On one of the first occasions on 
which the title ‘General WILLIAM BooTH’ was used in 
print, he ringed the first word in the proof and returned it 
to me with a note at the side, ‘ Cannot this form be altered ? 
It looks too pretentious!’! And yet, side by side with 
this natural shyness, there was, at any rate after the first 
few years, the most determined and absolute dedication of 
all his powers to make known the Saviour of the world, and 
the utmost readiness to be made a spectacle—if need be a 
derided spectacle—for men and angels, if only he could 
attract attention to the Lamb of God. 

When he assumed the entire control of the work, he had 
of course but the faintest idea of the possibilities which 
time has shown were before us. But even so the question 
as to what form the Organization should take immediately 
became a serious one. No one desired to build without a 
plan, still less to build without sufficient foundation, and 
least of all to build without some reasonable prospect of 
permanence. A system of government must be decided 
upon. When it came to making a choice in that matter he 
conceived himself to be perfectly untrammelled as regards 
the various Church systems already in existence. So far 
as he could see no particular theory of a Church and no 
particular form of Church government could find any sup- 
port either direct or indirect in the teaching of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. This being so, he felt that he was free to adopt 
that modified form of militarism which has proved so prac- 
tical for our great purposes, and is seen to be so effective in 
The Army of to-day. 

But it must not be supposed that this was determined 
upon without great searchings of heart and humbling of 
spirit, nor without doing considerable violence to his own 
feelings. He, of all people, had no ambition to be a Pope! 
He did not desire to make a new sect. Indeed, neither he 
nor any of us who were associated with him had any such 
thought. We were, of course, as the work prospered, 
assailed on that point both by friends and foes, but it was 


1The Life of William Booth, Vol. I, contains a facsimile of the 
sheet referred to. 


45 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


not difficult to answer that we were as far as could be from 
a sect, as ordinarily understood. It was not a Church after 
the fashion of the Churches but an Army that was aimed at 
—and which, thank God, is still aimed at. That is, a force 
as real, as active, as self-sacrificing and as much under 
control for soul-winning as the ordinary military armies are 
for slaughter and destruction. 

Writing on this matter, which continued for years a 
tender point with the Founder, I find Commissioner Railton, 
saying, and his words come home to some of us even to-day : 


‘But this is making a denomination—a new sect.’ Well, and 
supposing it is. Is there any harm in doing so? Is there not a need 
for just such a ‘sect’ in many a city and town of this kingdom, 
where no such work is being done amongst the masses? But we 
deny that we are in any proper sense a sect. We refuse to settle 
down into places of worship such as might be agreeable to our 
people and their families, but insist upon the open-air stand and the 
place of amusement, where there may be little comfort, but where 
the most good may be done. We refuse to allow our Officers to stay 
very long in any one place, lest they or the people should sink into 
the reJationship of pastor and flock, and look to their mutual enjoy- 
ment and advantage rather than to the Salvation of others. The 
whole Army is kept in its course by the direction of one controlling 
will. . . . We refuse utterly to allow of any authoritative assembly, 
committee, church meeting, or any other representative or popular 
gathering, except purely for the purpose of auditing finance and 
accepting and confirming and arranging for the execution of the 
plans which have been tried and proved most calculated to promote 
the common object. We are not and will not be made a sect. We 
are an Army of Soldiers of Christ, organized as perfectly as we have 
been able to accomplish, seeking no Church status, avoiding as we 
would the plague every denominational rut, in order perpetually 
to reach more and more of those who lie outside every Church 
boundary. Owing to our adherence to this military system, we are 
losing almost every year Officers who, having lost their first love, 
begin to hanker after the ‘rights,’ ‘ privileges,’ ‘ comforts,’ 
‘teaching,’ or ‘ respectability ’ of the Churches. 


And there came to be something of the same freedom 
from the trammels of the past in the relation of many 
methods of The Army to its inner spirit. This, again, was 
seen first of all in the Founders themselves. They came to 
understand in a marvellous way the power of external 
impression on the people, and the influence which it could 


HOW THE BUTTONS CAME OFF 49 


exert in favour of religion and righteousness. Holding back 
somewhat in the early years from the sensational and 
broadly emotional, they came at last to accept every lawful 
thing which would arrest the divided attention or seize for 
God the imagination of the crowd. The employment of 
music was one example of this. The Churches, from Rome 
and onwards, used instrumental music of some kind. But 
they first, since the days of the Israelites, brought the 
trumpets and cymbals and drums out into the highways 
and market places of the world. They put the ‘secular’ 
music to sacred uses, and made the ‘ sacred’ music more 
sacred still! Ours is the marching Chorus, the bivouacking 
Choir, the peripatetic Organ! How well that this should 
have been done! What a message of hope and peace, what 
a call to higher things The Army musicians have brought 
to the people ! 

The employment of untrained and often very uncouth 
and ignorant converts to do the work of calling their former 
associates to Christ, and to do it in their own free and easy 
way, was another instance of this same principle of being “ all 
things to all men’ that by any means they might save some. 
They saw that the mighty change produced by Salvation 
and the whole outcome of that change, including emotion 
and sanctified passion, could be employed for the spread of 
Christ’s Kingdom. 

In the preface to his book ‘ Broken Earthenware,’ 
Harold Begbie says : 

Does one expect a man whose entire being has suffered so great, 
SO pervasive, so cataclysmic a change, to walk sedately, to measure 
his words, to take the temperature of his enthusiasm and feel the 
pulse of his transport ? The enchanted felicity which sends this 
man singing and marching into the slums is not only the token of 
the miracle in himself, but is the magic, as my book shows over and 
over again, which draws unhappy and dejected souls to make sur- 


render of their sin and wretchedness. Does not Christ speak of a 
sinner’s repentance actually increasing the joy of Heaven ? 


And there is a profound truth in Professor Seeley’s 
words : 
No heart is pure that is not passionate, 
No virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic ! 


50 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


Yes, but with all this, definite and distinctive and 
effective as it was and is, there was no depending on it or on 
kindred influences or activities for spiritual results. Our 
religion works by regeneration, not merely by impression ; 
‘by life rather than by movement; by the incoming of God, 
not merely by worshipping Him or by building up a kind 
of likeness to Him.’ 

The purpose, deliberate and persistent, to make an 
impression by external means, was there with the Founders 
and is with The Army, but always as a subordinate aim, 
merely as a way towards the great end. The Army has 
ever set out to awaken and move the spirits of men, striving 
to stir by any means the slothful, the sensual, the wilful, 
and ready to employ every kind of measure which will serve 
to do that work. But in that work we have ever recognized 
that only the Holy Spirit can quicken the spirits we long 
to save, can bring them to that Holiness which they were 
made to manifest, were destined to enjoy. 

And so, as ‘ the buttons came off,’ and more and more a 
holy liberty spread its influence in the Founders’ lives, and 
from them to us, there was more and more seen the power 
of a Living Saviour working among the peoples, a Saviour 
strong to deliver, mighty to save, almighty to create and 
renew, our ever-present Keeper, our all-satisfying Food. 


VII 


‘SIGNS AND WONDERS’ 


And as he journeyed, he came neay Damascus : and suddenly there 
shined vound about him a light from Heaven : and he fell to the earth, 
and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou 
Me?... And Saul arose from the earth ; and when his eyes were opened, 
he saw no man ; but they led him by the hand, and brought him into 
Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat 
nov dvink.—Acts ix. 3, 4, 8, 9. 

I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the 
body, I cannot tell; ov whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God 
knoweth) ; such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew 
such a man (whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell: God 
knoweth) : how that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard un- 
speakable words, which it 1s not lawful for a man to uttery.—2 Cor. xii. 


2-4. 

ALL my life I have been interested in what are sometimes 
spoken of as bodily manifestations, though I have had a 
considerable degree of misgiving. From my earliest years 
of responsible work for God I have approached all such 
manifestations, if not with a hostile mind, certainly with a 
mind deliberately cautious. I have always felt that any- 
thing claiming to be of the supernatural must have creden- 
tials which placed its genuineness beyond cavil. Neverthe- 
less, I have this feeling also—and with regard to The Army 
I have it particularly—that there is a place for these out- 
ward demonstrations which have undoubtedly been wit- 
nessed by us, and the like of which are recorded in various 
periods of religious history. 

The first instances of manifestation to which I was 
introduced were seen in the extraordinary breaking down of 
ungodly persons in the presence of the Spirit of God. I 
have seen men in our Meetings, who were raving and blas- 
pheming when the service began, suddenly broken down as 


ye 


52 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


though some physical power had laid them prostrate on 
the floor, and after a time of silence, weeping, and penitence, 
they were confessing their sins and imploring the mercy of 
God. In many such cases the whole of their subsequent 
lives was changed, and no question could arise in the minds 
of any of those who knew them as to the reality of the 
experience. 

One of the earliest instances of this which I met with 
was not in connexion with Army work at all. As a young 
lad I visited Cardiff from time to time and stayed with our 
friends Mr. and Mrs. Billups. During one of these visits 
Robert Aitken, vicar of Pendeen, in Cornwall, and father of 
Canon Hay Aitken, was conducting a‘ mission ’ in St. John’s 
Church there. 

The mission was very successful. Night after night the 
churches were crowded, and many scores of persons crowded 
together at the Communion rail and were afterwards met in 
a schoolroom by Mr. Aitken, who exhorted them as peni- 
tents. Lad as I was, I was detailed by Mr. Aitken, who had 
known my father, to look after some lads of my own age, 
and I became somewhat intimate with the inner work of the 
mission. It was there also that I became acquainted with 
one of the most delightful men who has ever crossed my 
path. This was Mr. (later Canon) Howells, a Welshman, 
one of the saints of God, so intimate with spiritual things — 
and so gentle and lovable in his whole personality as to be 
a brother of all the Church of Christ. 

In the course of this mission some opposition and ridi- 
cule developed in the town, and Mr. Aitken was specially 
attacked for certain remarks he had made in a sermon on 
retribution, and it was indeed a tremendous sermon. I 
was walking up the street one day when I saw Mr. Aitken 
approaching. A number of men, on seeing him, flocked to 
the door of a public-house and jeered at him as he passed, 
one of them offering a pot of liquor. Mr. Aitken turned 
sharply round on this poor fellow, and said to him in his 
deep voice, but with extreme tenderness, ‘ Oh, my lammie ! 
how will you bear the fires of Hell?’ At those words the man 
instantly dropped on the pavement. He fell like a piece of 


“SIGNS AND WONDERS’ 53 


wood, apparently losing all consciousness for the moment. 
One or two people assisted him, Mr. Aitken looking on, and 
presently there on the sidewalk he came to himself and 
sought the mercy of God, afterwards, as I learned, becoming 
an earnest Christian man. 

Later on, in Meetings of The Army, we had far more 
wonderful scenes of this nature. During an ‘All-Night of 
Prayer,’ for example, there would be a certain movement 
apparent among the people, and sometimes when prayer was 
being offered, and at other times during the singing or the 
address of a particular speaker, here and there among the 
audience people would be observed to fall to the ground. 
At times they appeared to fall with great violence, yet I 
have never known of anyone being really hurt. On some 
occasions there would be perhaps in a meeting of several 
hundreds of people only half a dozen such manifestations, 
although I have known as many as fifty or sixty in one 
gathering. Sometimes the younger people were in the 
majority, but at other times those thus influenced were 
mainly from the older portions of the audience. 

One case is recorded in my journal of January 16, 1878, 
of a meeting following our half-yearly Council of War at 
Whitechapel, when nearly all our evangelists were present : 

At night Corbridge led a Hallelujah Meeting till 10 o’clock. Then 
we commenced an Ail-Night of Prayer. Two hundred and fifty 
people were present till 1 a.m.; two hundred or so after. A tre- 
mendous time. From the very first Jehovah was passing by, 
searching, softening, and subduing every heart. The power of the 
Holy Ghost fell on Robinson! and prostrated him. He nearly 
fainted twice. The brother of the Blandys? entered into full liberty, 
and then he shouted, wept, clapped his hands, danced, amid a scene 
of the most glorious and heavenly enthusiasm. Others meanwhile 
were lying prostrate on the floor, some of them groaning aloud for 
perfect deliverance. I spoke twice in the course of the night; so 
did Corbridge. He did well. . . . It was a blessed night. 


In many cases these manifestations occurred among those 


who had resisted the light breaking in on their lives. In 
some cases they had resisted the call to surrender themselves 
1 Robinson was a North Country pitman of specially powerful build, 


who had lately entered the service of the Mission. 
2 Two Evangelists of ours. 


54 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


to some particular service or self-denial, or to abandon some 
doubtful thing. Not infrequently persons who seemed most 
unlikely to be the subjects of these special influences—some 
of whom had indeed openly said, ‘I will take care that 
nothing of this kind ever happens to me ’—had been over- 
come. Others, again, would be sincere seekers after higher 
things ; perhaps in some of these last cases there was a 
predisposition to yield easily to the influence of the hour. 
I always looked upon such—although it seems almost a 
contradiction to say so—as the least satisfactory. All the 
same, judged by their subsequent experience, they often 
proved to have been most graciously and wonderfully 
blessed. 

My own course, and the course adopted by most of our 
leaders in the presence of these influences, was, while never 
opposing or deprecating them, to take care to have the sub- 
jects of them immediately, or at any rate as soon as it was 
possible, removed from the public gathering. They were 
usually taken to adjoining rooms, the men separate from 
the women, and quietly laid down. Wherever possible, 
especially in the early days when we were less accustomed 
to what afterwards became more ordinary, we had a doctor 
within call lest some ill effects should follow these experi- 
ences; perhaps also sometimes with a view to confirming 
their genuineness. 

This rapid removal from the open meeting was a wise 
thing. It effectually prevented any vain or neurotic persons 
from drawing attention to themselves. But it is important 
to remember that we very seldom had any cases that were 
not entirely sincere. Although we had various doctors in 
attendance at different times and in different localities, the 
number of cases in which it was the medical opinion that 
there was something ‘put on’ was exceedingly small, whether 
among women or men; so small, in fact, as to be almost 
negligible. 

What happened afterwards? Well, the great majority 
of those who were unsaved sought the pardon of God and 
lived new lives, and the fact that their new lives dated from 
so extraordinary a beginning no doubt helped their faith. 


“SIGNS AND WONDERS’ 55 


With regard to those who were already our own people or 
were Christian people visiting our meetings, the after- 
effects, of course, varied. In the majority of such cases an 
immediate desire was manifest to give themselves wholly to 
the will of God. 

[ must have heard hundreds of testimonies to the 
wonderful help received during or in consequence of these 
visitations. They were testimonies from people about whose 
absolute sincerity there could be no reasonable question, 
and of whose increased devotion in the cause of God there 
was abundant evidence. The explanation of these prostra- 
tions is difficult to frame. May it not be that, so far as the 
merely physical is concerned, certain Divine influences 
coming upon a crowd of people are specially attracted by 
those who might be described as spiritual conductors, and 
that such persons, being overweighted as it were on the side 
of the physical, lose their balance and fall down ? 

In a certain number of cases we had remarkable descrip- 
tions of visions or revelations occurring during the period 
of unconsciousness. These were, however, relatively few in 
number, for though I heard of many who had been conscious 
of remarkable things, they did not, as a rule, seem anxious 
to say much about them. There was a kind of restraint 
upon them. The impression they gave was akin to that 
expressed by the Apostle when he spoke of having been 
caught up into the third heaven, and being uncertain whether 
he was in the body or out of the body; being, that is, in 
some rapture or ecstasy which left him afterwards undecided 
as to where he was—and of hearing unspeakable words not 
again to be uttered. 

Nevertheless, some striking descriptions were given. I 
cannot say that such recitals, with here and there an excep- 
tion, impressed me deeply, and for this reason. There was 
nearly always an element in them which sounded unnatural. 
Still, some of them were truly most remarkable, and to the 
ordinary mind most moving, and often produced great 
effects in the telling. 

One of these exceptions just referred to was the case 
of a woman named Bamford, an Officer who came from 


56 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


Nottingham. After a visitation of this kind which came upon 
her during an ‘ All-Night of Prayer,’ in which she lay for 
nearly five hours unconscious, and during which her coun- 
tenance was most evidently brightened, she gave a picture 
of something she had seen, relating chiefly to the felicity 
of the redeemed. It made a profound impression upon 
my own heart, and I believe it afterwards helped her to 
win hundreds of souls for God, for she constantly referred to 
it in her work as an Officer. She died some years later with 
a glorious record of soul-winning behind her. In some of 
her Corps her name is still as ‘ ointment poured forth.’ 

There was also a similar instance of a man. He was 
undoubtedly an extraordinary person, in the sense that he 
always seemed to be living on the verge of considerable 
elation, so that he had to be scrutinized carefully. He had 
several visitations. In fact, he seemed a favourable ‘ sub- 
ject,’ and when he came back to earth, so to speak, he had 
something wonderful to relate, not perhaps wonderful in the 
sense of profundity or originality, but wonderful for the 
intensity with which it had evidently gripped his own soul. 
For instance, he spoke on one occasion—lI think it was at 
Hammersmith Town Hall—on a picture he had seen of 
himself at the Final Judgment, and how in this tremendous 
ordeal he had only barely escaped the censure of the Judge 
because of the negligence of his life and character. I shall 
never forget how it affected a town-hall audience, three 
parts of whom were men who did not believe in this sort of 
thing, and at first regarded the speaker with a certain pity- 
ing amusement. Yet he took hold even of these scoffers in 
a way which gave them to think. He made them feel that 
at least his eyes had seen the thing described. He was a 
lovable fellow, became an Officer afterwards, and killed 
himself with work for others. 

Instances of levitation also took place in our services, 
and well authenticated stories came before me from time to 
time. Of these, however, I do not write now, except to say 
that I cannot doubt that everything about them was open 
and true. Nor can I dwell at any length upon equally well 
authenticated instances of Divine healing. The Army has 


‘SIGNS AND WONDERS’ 57 


ever had in its ranks in various parts of the world a number 
of people unquestionably possessed of some kind of gift of 
healing. If extravagances have gathered round the subject 
in some quarters, they ought not to be permitted to obscure 
the central fact, which is that the healing of the sick by 
special immediate Divine interposition, in answer to prayer 
and faith, has undoubtedly occurred. 

Surely there is nothing surprising in this. On the 
contrary, it would have been surprising had it been other- 
wise. For we have not merely recognized that the healing 
of the sick by the power of God has from the beginning been 
associated with the office of prophets, priests, teachers, and 
apostles, but it has always seemed to us in perfect harmony 
with the views and experience of The Army itself that God 
should heal the sick after this fashion. Not only has no- 
thing to the contrary ever been taught amongst us, but far 
and near we have insisted upon the fact that God does raise 
up the sick in answer to our prayers; and numerous in- 
stances, as I have said, of this healing ministry have occurred 
throughout our history. 

All these manifestations of the unusual have been 
experienced also in the work of The Army in other lands. 
Perhaps one of the least likely countries for such phenomena 
is Holland; yet there they have occurred, especially in 
connexion with the work for the thoughtless and the un- 
saved. Men have fallen on their faces as though stricken 
by some unseen Hand, and have cried aloud for the mercy 
of God. In Switzerland also similar wonders have been 
witnessed, and in some of the Scandinavian countries, 
where indeed we have had trouble owing to manifestations 
called the ‘ Gift of Tongues.’ 

We have to be suspicious of any voices or gifts which 
make men indisposed to bear the Cross or to seek the 
Salvation of others; and although some of our own people 
have received what is spoken of as a gift of tongues, we have 
almost invariably found that one of the consequences has 
been a disposition to withdraw from hard work for the 
blessing of others and from fearless testimony to the Saviour. 
I recognize the dangers which attend the whole subject, and 


58 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


while I believe that these things, as I have witnessed them, 
are Divine in their origin, I do not forget that in some 
instances they may have been mixed with what is the very 
reverse. 

In the United States, in the earlier days, we had a record 
of somewhat similar experiences, except that there they 
generally took the form of extreme joy. One of the pecu- 
liarities of the prostrations and trances and the like in 
Europe has been the great solemnity which has nearly 
always marked their occurrence, no matter whether they 
concerned those who were outside or inside The Army. 
But in the United States it was rather the other way about. 
In these demonstrations of the Spirit, the reality of which 
no one would challenge who knew what had really happened, 
there was an accompaniment of overpowering joy, exhibited 
in singing, and sometimes in a disposition to dance, or to 
remain for a long period in a kind of ecstasy. The practical 
effects, however—and it is by their practical effects that all 
these things must be judged—were very much the same 
there as elsewhere. 


VIII 
THE FOUNDER AND THE BISHOPS 


AN interesting episode in the history of The Army was the 
series of discussions—or, shall I say, negotiations— which 
took place with certain distinguished leaders of the Church 
of England in the early eighties. The impulse to these 
negotiations really came out of the interest awakened in 
religious as well as irreligious circles by the rise and progress 
of The Army. Early in 1882 the then Archbishop of York 
(Dr. Thomson) wrote as follows to the Founder : 

SIR,—Some of my clergy have written to me to beg that I would 
ascertain how far it was possible for the Church to recognize the work 
of The Salvation Army as helping forward the cause of Christ con- 
sistently with our discipline. For this purpose they asked me to 
put myself into communication with your Leaders. I now, in 
compliance with their request, address you with this friendly 
pect 

Some of us think that you are able to reach cases, and to do so 
effectually, which we have great difficulty in touching. They 
believe that you are moved by zeal for God, and not by a spirit of 
rivalry with the Church, or any other agency for good, and they 
wish not to find themselves in needless antagonism with any in 
whom such principles and purposes prevail. 


Shortly afterwards, the Lower House of Convocation 
petitioned the Upper House, that is, the House of Bishops, 
to issue some general instruction as to the attitude of the 
Church of England towards The Army. A Committee was 
then appointed to consider the question, of which Dr. Ben- 
son, the Bishop of Truro, was the chairman. The instruc- 
tions issued do not concern us here, but shortly after this 
the Founder received a letter from the Bishop in which, 
after referring to the growth of the work, he opened the 
subject of harmony with the Church. It was not purposed 


59 


60 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


to enter upon any formal arrangements, but several of the 
bishops had desired to know more of the Movement and to 
make themselves acquainted with its spirit. If from a free 
interchange of views there should be found any way of co- 
operation with The Army many Christian people would 
rejoice. Would the General be willing to meet a few repre- 
sentatives of the Church for a friendly discussion? The 
Founder accepted this invitation. 

The purpose which the Church of England authorities 
had in view was to find a means of linking up The Army in 
union with that Church. The principal ecclesiastics who 
took part in the negotiations were Dr. Benson, then Bishop 
of Truro, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury ; Canon 
Westcott, of Westminster, and of the University of Cam- 
bridge—afterwards Bishop of Durham; Dr. Lightfoot, at 
that time Bishop of Durham; Canon Wilkinson, who was 
subsequently Bishop of Truro, and after that Bishop of 
St. Andrews; and Randall Davidson, the present Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, who was then Dean of Windsor. 
With each of these I had some intercourse, and on one or 
two occasions met several of them together. Each one of 
them made a distinct impression upon me, which the passage 
of a long stretch of years has not effaced. 

Dr. Davidson, the only one of the group who is now 
living, was acting in these negotiations as the representative 
of Dr. Tait, the then Archbishop of Canterbury. He struck 
me aS a man who, while sincerely anxious to explore the 
ground and, if possible, to arrive at some means of linking 
The Salvation Army with his Church, and of helping 
forward its work, was yet fully determined, if this should be 
the issue, not to allow the Founder to continue in what was 
called his ‘autocratic’ relationship. Evidently it was 
unthinkable to him that William Booth should ever become 
a high ecclesiastic in the Church of England, and for that 
reason alone he was careful to ensure that no power beyond 
what he could not help conceding should remain in the 
Founder’s hands if The Army should come into alliance 
with his Church. Dr. Davidson was very urbane and con- 
siderate throughout the negotiations, and although he was 


THE FOUNDER AND THE BISHOPS 61 


the rigid—not to say narrow—ecclesiastic, he showed real 
ability in fastening upon essentials when in conference with 
the Founder. I do not think he quite realized on his side 
how completely the Founder saw the ‘ buttons on the back 
of his coat,’ but he did grasp the fact that he was not willing 
to relinquish his full control, no matter what advantages 
might be secured from the inclusion of himself and his 
Organization under the wing of the Church of England. So 
far as Dr. Davidson was concerned, this was, I am afraid, 
irom the beginning, fatal to the project. 

Canon Westcott’s was quite a different type of church- 
manship. He was a scholar and recluse rather than a man 
experienced in ecclesiastical politics, and if a given end 
seemed to be desirable, he was inclined to underestimate any 
practical difficulties which might be in the way. I regarded 
him as one who really cared for the progress of religion, 
quite apart from the advancement either of the Church of 
England or of The Army. His influence upon the negotia- 
tions was that of a large-minded and sympathetic statesman, 
earnestly desirous of securing for his Church the accession 
of youthful zeal and vitality which unmistakably charac- 
terized the new Movement. He was, I dare say, more at 
home in the privacy of his study than at our round table, 
and he hardly realized how when a thing is theoretically 
desirable, its attainment may be impeded by obstructions 
which arise out of the nature of the case, and are not to be 
ascribed to the narrowness or obduracy of anybody. I 
carried away from our brief intercourse a deep impression 
of Dr. Westcott as a truly spiritual man; not exactly one 
of the old mystics, and yet possessed of a good deal of their 
vision and their charm. He was indeed a man to thank God 
for, no matter in what age he lived or to what Church he 
belonged. 

Of Dr. Lightfoot I saw little; but here, again, the 
student and the scholar predominated. He was more wil- 
ling than any of the others to leave the matter to Benson 
and Davidson. He spoke very kindly at that time in public, 
commending what he called the ‘apostolic zeal’ of The. 
Army. He remarked with great satisfaction that a large 


62 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


proportion of its converts and members were comparatively 
young people. To his thinking it was a grand testimony to 
the character of its message and to the efficacy of its work 
that this Organization should be able to call to its banner 
the fiery and adventurous spirit of early manhood and 
womanhood. He also spoke with great appreciation of 
my dear mother’s writings, and he joined heartily with 
Dr. Benson in desiring to bring about some kind of union 
with us. , 

Bishop Lightfoot’s most memorable testimony to the 
work of The Army is found in his unforgettable words about 
the lost ideal of the work of the Church of Christ. Let the 
passage be quoted in full: 

Shall we be satisfied with going on as hitherto, picking up one 
here and one there, gathering together a more or less select congre- 
gation, forgetful meanwhile of the Master’s command, ‘ Go ye into 
the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in’? The Sal- 
vation Army has taught us a higher lesson than this. Whatever 


may be its faults, it has at least recalled to us the lost ideal of the 
work of the Church, the universal compulsion of the souls of men. 


Of the five negotiators perhaps I retain the happiest 
personal memory of Canon Wilkinson, afterwards Bishop of 
Truro, and later of St. Andrews. Wilkinson was one of the 
sweetest men I ever knew, either within or without The 
Army borders. Both humble and sagacious, he had a gift 
for mediation and reconcilement which he had already put 
to good use in his own Church by intervening between the 
bishops and the ritualists. His feeling for The Army and 
some of its leaders was not simply admiration; it was 
love. He was the member of the group to take up the réle 
of persuading the Founder to soften his conditions ; and he 
it was who suggested with regard to the sacraments a com- 
promise—which afterwards for a time bore some fruit— 
whereby the members of The Army were to be invited once 
a year to the Communion in their respective parish churches. 
To the more strait-laced of the negotiators the accredited 
position which the women Officers already occupied in 
The Army presented serious difficulty ; and it was Wilkin- 
son, again, who suggested that these comrades should be 


THE FOUNDER AND THE BISHOPS 63 


given an assured position and recognized as a body of 
deaconesses, but that any future additions to their number 
should be required to go through a certain examination 
folowing our Training. I think that Canon Wilkinson 
worked more arduously to bring about what they all desired 
than any of the others, and also that he had more faith than 
any of them for a practical outcome. 

The Bishop of Truro, Dr. Benson, however, was the 
moving spirit in the negotiations. To him there had 
evidently come a kind of revelation of the new strength 
which the Church of England would acquire with The Army 
as its fighting auxiliary. His naturally sanguine tempera- 
ment helped him to see not only what presented itself at the 
moment, but what was likely to come to pass in the future. 
He realized—and said as much—that The Army, which was 
then working in only three or four countries, was destined 
to play an awakening part in many lands. The Bishop of 
Minnesota (Dr. H. B. Whipple) had acquainted him with 
what The Army was beginning to do in the United States, 
and Benson saw an opportunity for that extension of the 
Church beyond the Old Land which his school of thought 
most earnestly desired. 

I believe that Dr. Benson also had the best conception of 
the spiritual forces which The Army had released. Whereas 
the other negotiators, more particularly Dr. Davidson, 
centred their thought upon the Leaders and their Staff, 
Benson saw The Army en masse. Moreover, there was a 
prophetic vein in him. He had a vision of the future after 
the manner of Balaam, when he said of Israel of old, ‘ from 
the top of the rocks I see him . . . who can number the 
fourth part of Israel . . . as the valleys are they spread 
forth, as trees which the Lord hath planted... .’ 

Benson saw The Army as a force—a force which would 
go far and carry much; and subsequent events have 
abundantly proved that he was right. It was undoubtedly 
these considerations which stirred his spirit, and urged him 
to take the initiative. I never thought so highly of him 
intellectually as did some others who were more intimate 
with him. I cannot say that I regarded him as being of the 


64 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


calibre of Westcott or Lightfoot ; but his combination of 
courtliness and candour, his genial freedom of manner and 
evident sincerity of feeling, made him lovable and unforget- 
table. There was something, half hidden, perhaps, but yet 
attractive, about his personal sympathy with heart religion, 
and therefore with our religion. He struck me, and I talked 
of it at the time, as a man who suddenly perceived in actual 
life what he had long looked for, more or less in vain. There, 
in flesh and blood, visible to all, were ordinary people who 
had renounced the pomp and glory of this world, who were 
really living for others, and who had organized the new-old 
conception of the Kingdom of God as for the poor. And, 
seeing it, he longed with a great longing to bring it into 
close union with himself and with the Church he loved. 

All these men were, of course, Church of England men. 
They put the Church to which they belonged first in every- 
thing, and indeed nothing in our discussions involved the 
smallest departure on their part from a perfect loyalty to 
their own communion. But more than once we saw signs 
of the difficulties which undoubtedly confront all sincere 
thinkers when they come to claim, as the Church of England 
does claim, exclusive graces or privileges for any particular 
body of Christian people. The fact is, that the Church of 
England is no more the Church than the Church at Jerusalem 
or the Church at Rome, or the Church of the Lutherans and 
Puritans, or the Church of the Calvinists and Presbyterians. 

It was, of course, the purpose of our Lord Jesus Christ 
to gather out of the world a people composed of His true 
believing followers. This was spoken of in the New Testa- 
ment as the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God. 
It is obvious that in the accomplishment of this purpose a 
Body or Society would be formed distinct from the world in 
life, in purpose, and in interests, and that it would be 
generally recognized as such. This implies union and some 
form of organization, varying, no doubt, from time to time, 
but marked always under whatever form, by the possession 
of a certain common spirit—the spirit of Christ. ‘ By their 
fruits ye shall know them.’ Thus we get a visible society— 
the Society spoken of in the Bible as the Church or Con- 


THE FOUNDER AND THE BISHOPS 65 


gregation.! But as to the outward form which this Society 
should take, Jesus Christ gave no recorded instruction. It 
is impossible to believe, if He had intended any particular 
constitution or form of government to be essential to this 
Society—His Kingdom on earth—that He would not have 
left explicit directions with regard to it. Whereas on the 
whole matter He is entirely silent—says, in fact, nothing 
at all on the subject. 

No, there is one Church. Just as there was only one 
people of Israel, no matter how widely scattered, so there 
is only one spiritual Israel. As Paul so finely says, ‘ There 
is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope 
of your calling; one Lord; one faith, one baptism, one 
God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, 
and in you all.’ And being one, yet it is to be for all 
peoples and all classes. In the Church of Christ ‘there is 
neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, 
Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all and 
in all.’ 

Of this, the Great Church of the Living God, we claim, 
and have ever claimed, that we of The Salvation Army are 
an integral part and element—a living fruit-bearing branch 
in the True Vine. 

The idea that Jesus Christ in some way instituted a 
society with set orders of worship, and appointed the times 
and manner of sacred things, such as sacraments and 
sacrifices, or settled an order of ministers who should be the 
exclusive channel of grace, has no particle of authority in 
the New Testament. On the contrary, the fact is that He 
left His followers free to adopt such forms and methods, 
under the guidance and instruction from time to time of 
the Holy Spirit, as they should feel wisest and most appro- 
priate to attain the objects in view. The Apostles did 
likewise, foreseeing that no matter how appropriate and 
wise might be the rules they could lay down for their day, 
other rules would be required for other times. 

Dr. Lightfoot, to whom I have just been referring, 
expresses in his work on ‘ The Christian Ministry ’ what is 


1 In the original the same word stands for both. 


66 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


so entirely in harmony with our view on this point, that 
I shall quote him. He says: 


The Kingdom of Christ, not being a kingdom of this world, is 
not limited by the restrictions which fetter other societies, political 
or religious. It is in the fullest sense free, comprehensive, universal. 
It displays this character not only in the acceptance of all comers 
who seek admission, irrespective of race or caste or sex, but also 
in the instruction and treatment of those who are already members. 
It has no sacred days or seasons, no special sanctuaries, because 
every time and every place alike are holy. Above all, it has no 
sacerdotal system. It interposes no sacrificial tribe or class between 
God and man by whose intervention God is reconciled and man 
forgiven. Each individual member holds personal communion with 
the Divine Head. To Him immediately he is responsible, and from 
Him directly he obtains pardon and draws strength. 


Further, as to the calling out and setting apart of leaders 
in the days of early Christianity, we find also a wonderful 
record of freedom and a remarkable likeness to what hap- 
pened with us. No one who knows The Army can study the 
story of our Lord’s selecting and calling the Twelve without 
being struck by the similarity in many respects—I say 
this with all reverence—of our method with His. And the 
glimpses of further calls which we get in the Acts illustrate 
also our nearness to Apostolic plans. The early Christian 
leaders—that is of the first hundred years—proceeded 
much as we have done. They dealt with a not dissimilar 
kind of material, chiefly uneducated and poor working 
people—and, guided by the Spirit of God, they adopted 
means for spreading and establishing the work just as the 
Founder and those who gathered around him, also led by 
the Spirit of God, adopted means, and not dissimilar means, 
for us—means which we still follow. 

On this subject it is of interest to read the earliest 
Christian writing (apart from the New Testament) which 
now remains in the world—a letter from a celebrated man of 
that time whose life in part ran parallel with the concluding 
years of the lives of many of the first Apostles. Clement of 
Rome, in about the year A.D. 96-8, says: 

The Apostles received the Gospel for us from the Lord Jesus 


Christ ; Jesus Christ was sent forth from God. Christ then was 
from God, and the Apostles from Christ. Both therefore were from 


THE FOUNDER AND THE BISHOPS 67 


the will of God in perfect order. Having then received commands, 
and being fully assured through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and being confirmed in the word of God with full assurance 
of the Holy Ghost, they went forth, preaching the good tidings 
that the Kingdom of God was at hand. Preaching therefore from 
country to country, and from city to city, they appointed their first 
fruits [that ts the converts], having tested them by the Spirit, to be 
bishops and deacons to them that should believe.? 


The word rendered ‘ bishop’ means literally overseer, 
and would answer to our Divisional Officer—one who came 
to have the oversight of several of the congregations or 
societies of Christian disciples. The word ‘ deacon’ means 
minister or servant. The ‘deacon’ was the first visiting 
official, he cared for the sick, and distributed the alms of 
the society among the poor as well as gave instruction in the 
Scripture. The deacon of those early days answers in many 
matters to the Field Officer of our own early history. 

We believe then that our Lord Jesus Christ has called 
us into His Church of the Redeemed, that our call has not 
been by man or the will of man, but by the Holy Spirit of 
God ; that our Salvation is from Him, not by ceremonies or 
sacraments or ordinances of this period or of that, but by 
the pardoning life-giving work of our Divine Saviour. We 
believe also that our system for extending the knowledge 
and power of His Gospel, and of nurturing and governing 
the believing people gathered into our ranks, is as truly and 
fully in harmony with the spirit set forth and the principles 
laid down by Jesus Christ and His Apostles as those which 
have been adopted by our brethren of other times or of 
other folds. 

In this we humbly but firmly claim that we are in no 
way inferior, either to the saints who have gone before, or 
—though remaining separate from them, even as one branch 
in the Vine is separate from another—to the saints of the 
present. We, no less than they, are called and chosen to 
sanctification of the Spirit and to the inheritance of eternal 
life. And our Officers are, equally with them, ministers in 
the Church of God, having received diversities of gifts, but 


1Tt will be noted that no reference is here made to ‘ Ordination,’ but 
to appointing ; nor to ‘ Sacraments,’ but to the good tidings. 


68 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


the one Spirit—endowed by His Grace, assured of His 
guidance, confirmed by His Word, and commissioned by 
the Holy Ghost to represent Him to the whole world. 
Speaking of this matter in 1894, the Founder said : 

The Salvation Army is not inferior in spiritual character to any 
Christian organization in existence. We are in no wise dependent 
on the Church. . . . If it perished off the face of the earth to-morrow 
we should be just as efficient for the discharge of the duties we owe 
to men as we are to-day. . . . We are, I consider, equal every way 
and everywhere to any other Christian organization on the face of 
the earth (i) in spiritual authority, (ji) in spiritual intelligence, 
(iii) in spiritual functions. We hold ‘the keys’ as truly as any 
Church in existence. 


But I must return to the bishops. In the course of 
the negotiations Benson and Davidson visited, either by 
appointment or quite unknown, certain Salvation Army 
centres, and were present at typical meetings. Of his visits 
Dr. Davidson afterwards wrote : 

Whatever be their errors in doctrine or in practice, I can only 
say that, after attending a large number of meetings of different 
kinds in various parts of London, I thank God from my heart that 
He has raised up to proclaim His message of Salvation the men and 
women who are now guiding The Army’s work, and whose power of 
appealing to the hearts of their hearers is a gift from the Lord 
Himself. I am sorry for the Christian teacher, be he cleric or 
layman, who has listened to such addresses as those given by 
General Booth, Mrs. Booth, and by some five or six at least of their 
* Staff Officers,’ who has not asked help that he may speak his 
message with the like straightforward ability and earnest zeal. 


Among the places to which Dr. Benson came was the 
Training Garrison at Clapton. His purpose was to look over 
the buildings, see something of the character of the students 
and of their work, and from this to form a judgment. He 
was late for his appointment that morning, and by the time 
he arrived I was conducting one of our ordinary Prayer 
Meetings with Officers. As soon as he learned that this was 
in progress he sent word that he would like presently to 
come into the service, where he hoped I would allow him to 
remain for at least a part of the time. Accordingly while I 
went on with the meeting, he looked round the buildings, 
saw something of the Cadets, the classes and text-books, 


THE FOUNDER AND THE BISHOPS 69 


and at last came into the Lecture Hall. He entered at the 
back, and, apart from myself, no one was aware of his 
presence. Some two hundred Officers were on their knees, 
and the meeting was one of liberty and fervour, with hearty 
responses and moving singing. We were having what we 
call a ‘ good time.’ 

After watching the meeting, on his knees, for nearly an 
hour, the Bishop, seeing that it was about to conclude, with- 
drew, and waited for me in one of the reception rooms. I 
was a little doubtful of the kind of impression such a 
gathering would have made upon him, not in any degree 
because I questioned its naturalness or rightness, but because 
its extreme freedom and its noise were in such contrast to 
the modes of worship to which he was accustomed. As I 
came into the room he rose from his seat, took both my 
hands in his, and before I could say a word, exclaimed, 
“O, my dear brother, the Holy Spirit is with you!’ I 
began to explain certain of the incidents which it might 
have been difficult for him to appreciate, but he stopped 
me, remarked on the evident sincerity of it all, and gave me 
Godspeed. 

There the story tails off. It is left with a rather ragged 
edge. Tait died, Benson became Archbishop of Canterbury, 
and Wilkinson Bishop of Truro. Other topics filled the 
mind, and other duties became urgent. My feeling is that 
the Founder unquestionably adopted the right course in 
these negotiations. I never took upon myself, nor did 
Railton, who was now in our inner councils, to urge upon 
the Founder that the freedom for which he had paid so 
great a price should in no case be forfeited, if its forfeiture 
meant the furtherance of what we all had more deeply at 
heart. We were aware that some kind of union with the 
Church of England would enhance our position in the eyes 
of the public, and that it would not only clear our financial 
skies in the immediate present, but probably enormously 
increase our resources for the future. 

But just as Dr. Davidson felt that the question of 
authority was the real difficulty, so we saw on our side that 
the absence of authority was a grave weakness of the Church 


70 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


of England, and that its sacrifice on our part would involve 
the ruin of The Army. There was nothing little or petty 
in this. It was not a point of personal prestige or dignity ; 
it was simply that the so-called ‘ autocracy,’ although it 
might lay us open to misunderstanding, was necessary for 
the effectiveness of our War. Railton here was a wise 
counsellor. He had already seen The Army beginnings in 
other lands ; he foresaw it encircling the globe, and he felt 
—as we all came to feel—that to barter the very thing which 
made The Army capable of such prompt mobility and such 
singleness of front could only prove disastrous. 

We must admit that had it been possible to reach some 
kind of combination, or even a treaty of mutual support, 
The Salvation Army would have been greatly helped, and 
there would have been an infusion of new enthusiasm and 
energy and spiritual life into the Church of England. Part 
of the energy and devotion which have been turned into 
High Church channels would have been guided into spheres 
of activity much more fruitful to the Church and useful 
to the world, and as I firmly believe, much more honouring 
to God. But it was not to be. And yet The Army is 
marching on ! 


IX 
SOME OTHER CHURCHMEN I HAVE KNOWN 


ARCHBISHOP TAIT, who was one of the moving spirits in the 
negotiations referred to in the previous chapter, was the 
first prominent ecclesiastic of the Church of England to give 
any kind of help to The Army. Early in 1882 my father 
bought the Grecian Theatre and dancing saloons and the 
Eagle Tavern, then a notorious place of evil life and corrupt 
influence in the north-east of London. We immediately 
turned it to a new employment, amid a storm of abuse from 
theatrical and kindred interests. It was towards this enter- 
prise that we received £5 from the then Archbishop of 
Canterbury. The gift was accompanied by a somewhat 
tremulous letter. Huis Grace’s secretary said : 

The question of the co-operation of the clergy of the Church of 
England in the actual work of your association is one of extreme 
difficulty. Without at present expressing any opinion on that 
subject, his Grace has no hesitation in approving the acquisition by 
you of premises used for so different a purpose. 


It is always to be counted to Archbishop Tait for 
righteousness that he did this in the face of most bitter 
opposition. As an example of the kind of thing he had to 
put up with, I find quoted in his ‘ Life’ a letter from one of 
his angry correspondents, in which it is said: ‘ Things have 
indeed come to a pass when the head of the English clergy, 
the official guardian of our orthodoxy, the man who more 
than any other is solemnly bound to denounce and if possible 
to extirpate heresy and schism, sends a donation from the 
chair of St. Augustine to promote the cause of the Church’s 
most profane and mischievous foe’ ! 

But the chair of St. Augustine has shifted its position. 
Archbishop Tait’s successor, Benson, looked on_ these 


7a 


72 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


matters differently. He was appealed to in 1888 for help 
towards the establishment of new rescue homes and food 
and shelter dépots, the forerunners of the Social Scheme. 
In reply his secretary wrote: 

His Grace thanks God for every hand held out to help the sad 
and suffering and to rescue the fallen, and can but rejoice if your 
work helps to fill one of the gaps in the lines of attack upon the 
kingdom of darkness. 

But while thus feeling deep sympathy for your philanthropic 
efforts in general, and wishing success to the rescue homes, he feels 
that he could not support a plan of passing and casual relief which 
aims at no permanent assistance and tends only to prolong the 
present distress, and also that state endowment of religious charities 
is contrary to the principle of the National Church, and would 
create both strifes and imperfectly organized rival agencies. 


The dictum that ‘ State endowment of religious charities 
is contrary to the principle of the National Church’ is 
really rich! But even this was not the final archiepiscopal 
word on the subject. On the occasion of our International 
Congress, in 1914, the present Archbishop of Canterbury 
(Dr. Randall Davidson) wrote a very kind letter to Bishop 
Boyd-Carpenter in which he requested him to attend the 
opening gathering and express the appreciation of the 
Church of England for the social and philanthropic work 
in which The Army, ‘ working in the name of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, has shown so much capable energy and per- 
severing enthusiasm.’ ‘Its authorities will not expect,’ his 
Grace went on, ‘ that we can, as the Church of England, 
express agreement with their doctrinal or ecclesiastical 
position. But this wide difference in no way weakens our 
appreciation of the remarkable service which they have 
beyond all doubt rendered to the community, both in 
England and abroad.’ 

So that we have one archbishop refusing to help the 
Social Work because he thinks it is casual relief and also 
because it would be State endowment of religious charities ; 
while another expresses approval of this very work, although 
he cannot subscribe to our doctrinal and ecclesiastical 
position! It reminds me a little of a famous American 
millionaire who, when asked to subscribe to our work among 


OTHER CHURCHMEN I HAVE KNOWN 73 


the American troops during the war, said, ‘ No, you are not 
a Church; you are a mere mission, and this is work for 
the Churches.’ When, later, we approached him on behalf 
of our home service work there, he said, ‘No, you are 
another Church, and that is what we do not want’ ! 

One of the first great churchmen with whom I came in 
contact was Dean Church. The incident is a curious one 
to reflect upon to-day. This Dean of St. Paul’s was a lovable 
and extremely sensitive man. He could’ never quite get 
free from the overwhelming influence of the cathedral and 
of the more outward aspects of Anglican worship and cere- 
monial, which he did so much to revive there. Yet he was 
a man of great spiritual insight, and, as any one who has 
read his sermons will understand, he made a very marked . 
impression on all who were even casually associated with him. 

My purpose in going to him was to ask if a service for 
The Army could be arranged in the cathedral, which is a 
stone’s throw from our Headquarters. We did not propose 
that any leader of The Army should take part in the conduct 
of the service. Members of The Army were to form the 
congregation while worship would be conducted perhaps by 
Lightfoot and the sermon preached by Liddon. Dean 
Church looked doubtful. It was evidently painful for him 
to refuse, but his duty to the cathedral must be done! 
He asked, after a few kindly words, whether most of our 
people, being working people, did not wear hobnailed boots ; 
I agreed that this might be so, and he said that St. Paul’s 
had not long ago been repaved at great expense, and that 
he feared the marble might be scratched! ‘Surely,’ I said, 
“you would not consider that a sufficient ground for keep- 
ing them out of a place set apart for the national recog- 
nition of religion?’ But he had made up his mind and 
insisted on his decision, and although I was profoundly dis- 
appointed by the absolute inadequacy and inconsequence 
of his reason for refusal, I could not but feel that it was in 
no way intended to offend. Dean Church had the unfor- 
tunate limitations of an extreme refinement of nature, 
combined with the ghastly narrowness of a high eccle- 
siasticism. 


74 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


Of Dr. Liddon, the great pulpit figure of St. Paul’s, who 
died within a few months of his Dean, I recall that he came 
to some of my weekly Holiness Meetings in Whitechapel, 
where he appeared much at home, taking a hearty share in 
the singing and evidently stirred by the testimonies. On 
one of these occasions he was introduced to me by a man 
who was with him, and gave me a kind of benediction. I 
can well understand, however, that Liddon, with his severe 
notions of discipline and seemliness in the church, may 
have been disturbed, as he was reported to have been, by 
some of the things which we did, though not, I think, at 
that meeting. There was no suggestion of this when he 
spoke to me. He was a man who saw that the Kingdom 
had a very wide door, a Broad Churchman, less strait-laced 
than any other divine of his time, and infinitely sad on 
account of divisive weaknesses in his own Church. 

I have heard other preachers in St. Paul’s, but Liddon 
and Knox-Little were the only men who seemed resolved 
to drive their message home. Neither of them was a man 
who contented himself with the quarter of an hour which 
many preachers deem sufficient. Liddon would preach the 
hour round. Knox-Little appeared to be a man determined 
to make the people understand what it was he wanted to 
say, and a man, too, with a heart stirred to its depths by 
the truths he spoke. He always read his sermons ; but this, 
while no doubt it detracted from their power in delivery, 
seemed to add to their substance. 

A very taking figure among the Churchmen of the same 
period was Archdeacon Wilberforce, He will be remem- 
bered as of Westminster, though perhaps his most fruitful 
years were spent in Southampton. He was a man who 
appealed to me from the very first time I met him, when 
he was rector of the fine church he built as a memorial to 
his father in the southern seaport. He showed the most 
charming old-world courtesy to my mother. For her he 
had, and often expressed, a reverential regard. She stayed 
with him more than once at Southampton and spoke at 
meetings which he organized. Later on I came to know 
him a little when he attended some of our services, and I 


OTHER CHURCHMEN I HAVE KNOWN 75 


heard him speak on more than one occasion. Once or twice 
during the series of conferences my mother held in the West 
End of London he opened the meeting for her, giving out 
the hymns and reading the Scripture, and saying a few 
words of introduction. 

With all the charm of his personal character and the 
delightful influences that played about his home—due in 
large degree to the beautiful affection which existed between 
himself and his wife—there was nevertheless a feeling that 
in many ways he was overmuch concerned with worldly 
things. His position was one of no small difficulty. Flat- 
tered and favoured by the great ones, and with everything 
around him that spoke of art and wealth and beauty, he 
was perhaps bound to appear something of a contradiction. 

Wilberforce stood by us in the Armstrong business, in 
1885. After that I lost touch with him to a great extent. 
In 1894 he came to Westminster, and seemed for a time to 
suffer eclipse. On his wife’s death, I believe, he was heart- 
broken. I wrote to him about his grief, to which he replied 
in tender words. 

The last time I saw him, though not to speak with, was 
at the funeral service of the Duke of Argyll, in the Abbey. 
He was then acting for the Dean of Westminster. I thought 
him looking much aged and worn, and my heart went out 
to him, so that I resolved to find some way of seeing him. 
Before I could put the resolve into execution, alas! he was 
gone. 

I do not class Wilberforce with Liddon as a great pulpit 
power, but he did exercise a very sound, restraining in- 
fluence, especially during fourteen or fifteen years of his 
life, on the upper middle-class of Church people at a time 
when many were beginning to give up their confidence in 
the divinity of the Son of God. 

The mention of these great Churchmen recalls another 
who belonged to their period. I refer to Dr. Temple, 
ultimately Benson’s successor at Canterbury. Immediately 
after Temple became Bishop of London in 1885, I came into 
touch with him over quite a different matter. When 
‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’ was published, 


76 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


the charge was made in one quarter that the facts had been 
overstated, whereupon Stead arranged that a committee of 
investigation should be set up, with the Bishop as chairman. 
To this committee in due course we presented our facts, 
and they found that there was abundant evidence for what 
Stead had alleged. Temple impressed me as a man who 
felt in a special degree the burden of London, its shame and 
sin. The gruff, shaggy prelate, who had small concern for 
the politer trifles, had had a harder struggle than most 
men who come to wear the mitre. He grew up under 
circumstances of real poverty. 

On one occasion during the sittings of this committee, 
the Lord Mayor (we met at the Mansion House) sent word 
that Temple wanted to speak to me. I found the Bishop 
standing with his back to the fire in the mayoral parlour. 
The Lord Mayor was commenting, in rather a fussy way, 
upon the peculiar circumstances which had brought the 
Bishop and The Army together. ‘ You know, my lord,’ he 
said, ‘I don’t know what your friends will think; and I 
am afraid I am responsible for allowing it to happen!’ 

The Bishop looked at me with his humorous eye, and 
gave one of his deep chuckles. 

“I don’t think it matters very much,’ he said drily, 
“what my friends think of me. What is important is 
what I think of them!’ 

Another great figure of Westminster—of Roman not 
Anglican Westminster—was Cardinal Manning. Our first 
touch with him was in 1882, when he wrote a paper on 
The Army in the ‘ Contemporary,’ of which Mr. (afterwards 
Sir) Percy Bunting had just become editor. It was critical 
in part, and yet it was thought to be a remarkable pro- 
nouncement of friendliness. One sentence in that article to 
which he gave emphasis and which he repeated was that 
The Salvation Army ‘ could never have existed but for the 
spiritual desolation of England.’ ‘ The spiritual desolation 
of London alone,’ he wrote, ‘would make The Salvation 
Army possible.’ The article was a great lift, up to a certain 
point. It brought us, of course, a small avalanche of corre- 
spondence from the extreme Protestant party, and some of 


OTHER CHURCHMEN I HAVE KNOWN Fig 8 


our critics who had always been disposed to discover 
Jesuitry in The Army now had their suspicions fully con- 
firmed! But it helped. 

Later the Founder and one or two of us met him and 
had a delightful time, and after the publication of ‘ In 
Darkest England and the Way Out’ he wrote to the 
Founder : 


“You have gone down into the depths. Every living soul cost the 
Most Precious Blood, and we ought to save it, even the worthless and the 
worst. Aiter the Trafalgar Square miseries I wrote a Pleading for the 
Worthless, which probably you never saw. It would show you how com- 
pletely my heart is in your book. No doubt you remember that the Poor 
Laws of Queen Elizabeth compelled parishes to provide work for the 
able-bodied unemployed, and to lay in stores of raw material for work.’ 


Manning influenced other Roman dignitaries to sym- 
pathize with us, and he used our work to broaden their views. 
He had greatly regretted the alienation of Cardinal Vaughan 
(then Bishop of Salford) from other than Catholic workers, 
urged him to visit some of The Salvation Army Shelters. 
Vaughan did so, accompanied by Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, who 
gives the following account of the visit to one place: 


‘In one room sat a number of old women, at various sorts of needle- 
work. ‘‘ Are any of my people here ?’’ asked the Bishop, addressing the 
assembly. And, dotted about the room, aged dames, in the dignity of 
poverty, stood up for their faith. Then the Bishop turned on the Captain : 
“And do these attend Protestant prayers ?’’ ‘‘ They attend the praises 
of God every evening.’”’ ‘‘ And what do you preach?’’ ‘“‘ We preach 
Christ, and Him crucified ; and we shall be very pleased if you will stay 
and so preach Him this evening. We are quite unsectarian.”’ 

“This was too much. “ Well, but if I told them that unless they were 
baptized they could not be saved ?’”’ ‘“‘ I should tell them that it was not 
true,’ said the Captain. ‘‘ And I should tell them that it was not true,”’ 
echoed Cardinal Manning when we told him the story an hour later; “I 
should explain to them the Church’s doctrine of the Baptism of Desire.”’ 

‘ Later in the day the Cardinal said to Vaughan that he hoped that he 
who was already so good a Catholic would now, after his contact with 
The Army, also be a good Christian ! ’ 


The impression which Cardinal Manning made upon my 
mind was that of a very clever, not to say wily old saint ! 
There was an undercurrent of subtlety about him which 
made one never quite sure of one’s grip. He had the wisdom 
of a serpent with, in a quite extraordinary degree, the harm- 


78 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


lessness of the dove. But for the poor he no doubt greatly 
cared. In all his dealings with them he endeavoured to 
bring them to a knowledge of God. I do not think that 
outside The Salvation Army I ever met a man who more 
uncompromisingly brought his religion into everything he 
touched, into everything he wrote, into everything he 
planned. He did it with the most exquisite tact, and 
without the slightest suggestion of putting himself forward, 
but he did it. 

I saw him several times at Westminster. More than 
once we spoke of the most intimate spiritual experiences. 
The Salvation Army was not within his Church, but it was 
at least within the protection of his Church’s prayers. He 
joined heartily in several attempts to raise funds for us. 
He saw the worth of those whom Society esteemed as 
worthless, and he liked The Army because it saw the same 
thing, and said so, and went to work to help them. I have 
seen him in various moods. I have seen him intensely 
critical, arguing with the most subtle skill with those who 
sought to cross swords with him. I have seen him angry, 
with flashing eyes and emphatic gestures denouncing ini- 
quity. And I have seen him tender, with the tears running 
down his ascetic cheeks, moved by some tale of sorrow, 
especially where little children were concerned. But I never 
lost the impression that somewhere behind those penetrating 
grey eyes, and those fine manners, and that exquisite tact, 
and that mystical saintliness, there was an astute diplo- 
matist looking out for the best way for his Church to take. 

I think that Manning was utterly wrong in the ground 
he took for joining the Roman Church, and personally I 
had more sympathy with Newman’s position than with his. 
I never mentioned to Manning—straight out—his action 
with regard to the doctrine of papal infallibility, the evidence 
for which he marshalled at great length in his writings in 
1870. But I did once say to him that no matter what fears 
might exist about infallibility in other quarters, we had no 
doubts as to the infallibility of our Pope! 

How he laughed ! 


x 
A MANAGER OF MEN 


THE pages of this book about our Founder have already 
extended beyond the space I had planned, but I cannot 
refrain from a reference to what was, after all, more out- 
standing and significant in him than his oratory, or his 
business genius, or his diplomatic skill—I mean his excel- 
lence in the management of men. 

Early in the history of our work he became convinced, 
as he said, that the best way of reaching the large class 
of the population lying at that time outside religious and 
moral influences, was by means of those who were of the 
same stock, who had its roughnesses still upon them, but 
who had passed through the saving fires and had become 
new men. In setting these men to work, he asked little more 
than that they were one with him in love for God, in zeal 
for the Salvation of men, and in willingness to obey orders 
received ; he took no account of birth, education, social 
position ; indeed, he felt that what the world calls advan- 
tages might easily prove encumbrances in the work we have 
to do. 

It was strange and often very difficult material that came 
to his hand in this way. He had, perhaps, a natural love 
for rough and original characters. He liked to have some 
angles about a man, upon which he could generally manage 
to hang something. Moreover, a fighting organization called 
for the spirit of enterprise, adventure, audacity, rather than 
for judgment or reflection. Among the men who stood close 
around William Booth in those early days were many bold, 
buccaneering spirits who quite as often needed the bridle 
as the spur. They were splendid material in many respects, 
but not easily manageable, not taking kindly to any yoke, 


79 


80 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


men not easily to be told the day and the hour what 
they were to do. The Founder, whatever gifts of manage- 
ment he may have had previously, had his powers wonder- 
fully sharpened through having to deal with these devoted 
but singular co-operators. It was partly, no doubt, owing 
to his habitual contact with these men during the early 
years of The Salvation Army that he became eventually 
one of the most successful managers of men the world has 
ever seen—one who must be placed very high in the ranks 
of commanders, no matter how illustrious in war, in politics, 
or in industry are the names-of the others. 

It is worth while to inquire a little into the secret of his 
managing quality. 

In the first place, he had the invaluable gift of discerning 
the good and useful qualities in every type of man, and this 
faculty became more sure and unerring as time went on. 
Some men have an instinct for detecting base metal in those 
who carry the appearance of honesty ; William Booth had 
rather the gift for discovering fine, even heroic qualities 
beneath exteriors which suggested the very opposite. Men 
who were to all appearance the most unlikely to be of any 
use to his organization—men whose participation in it 
might even be expected to create prejudice—were found by 
him to possess some unsuspected grace or ability or energy 
which fitted them to occupy a particular niche. Again 
and again I have known him seize hold of apparently 
hopeless material, give it a shake or two, invoke upon it 
the blessing of God, and put it to most excellent service. 

Not that he was invariably right in his judgments. He 
made mistakes, especially in the earlier years. But they 
were the mistakes of optimism. If he was at fault it was in 
action taken because he was too sanguine. If there was 
blindness in him it was blindness to the shadow, not to the 
light. He saw men’s weaknesses, and he knew and studied 
the peculiar dangers of every type of character; but, on the 
other hand, he had a vivid realization of the possible good 
in every man, and was so hopeful about it that sometimes 
he did not allow enough for the downward drag of old 
habit and antecedents. At the same time, the men 


A MANAGER OF MEN 81 


who proved altogether unworthy of his trust were singu- 
larly few. 

Allied with his discernment went his power of command. 
He was accustomed to call men and women to his side by 
vigorous methods, and once there he disciplined them into 
orderly legions. This power of command grew as the years 
went on, as he became not only more wise but also more 
confident. During the last twenty-five or thirty years of 
his life he was the ideal commander. His authority 
extended, not only to men’s hands and feet, but to their 
spirits, to the motives which governed them. 

Like all great leaders of men, he made great demands on 
his followers. The spirit of Cromwell, who rallied his men 
at Naseby by saying, ‘ Gentlemen, we are upon an engage- 
ment very difficult,’ is the spirit of the true leader. 
William Booth had that spirit in full measure. He never 
scrupled to ask hard things of those who fell in behind 
‘The Army Flag. He never tried to conceal the fact that 
he had called them to what many would regard as a desperate 
adventure. He knew that the hearts of all true men are won 
for a cause and a leader, not by what is promised to them, 
but by what is exacted from them. And they for their 
part recognized the voice of authority. Here was one of 
the men who are obviously made to be obeyed, a man who 
said to one, ‘Go!’ and he went, and to another, ‘ Come!’ 
and he came. 

Many men he sent on what might well appear to be 
forlorn hopes. Some he called to endure exile, to lead 
The Army in new lands, to face physical peril. To some he 
gave the charge of quite small spheres of service—hum- 
drum service—where, however, faithfulness was as important 
as in any other part of the field. Few men in history have 
asked their fellows to do such difficult and unusual things. 
But rarely had they any serious misgivings as to the right- 
ness of their leader’s choice, rarely any feeling that he had 
asked too much of them, or too little. It was very far from 
his ideal, of course, to get men working at top speed—the 
ideal that might content a factory manager—but in the 
matter of sanctification, in the matter of being given up 


G 


82 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


wholly to the will of God, there was nothing which he did 
not require. When he was not satisfied with the answers 
given to his solemn questions he would add, in tones and 
with authority not to be forgotten, ‘ Then to-day is the day. 
Let it be done to-day.’ 

With the extension of The Army to other races and 
nations the capacity for command grew upon him. It did 
not depend upon his prestige as the head of a world- 
enveloping organization, it was inherent in his personality. 
Men who came into contact with him, even when they could 
not speak his language, nor he theirs, were conscious of 
his authority. Thousands could have echoed the remark of 
the old Irish prize-fighter in the East End, when explaining 
how he came to surrender to William Booth at the first 
encounter, ‘Sure, there was something strange about him 
that laid hold of a man,’ and, later, after he had been brought 
down before God, ‘I got up from my knees ready to die 
for that man.’ 

Side by side with that humble tribute may be placed 
the remark of a distinguished American describing the 
impression which the Founder made on a gathering—at 
Washington—of senators and others, including some of the 
greatest in American politics: ‘ The Salvationist chief took 
them captive without their knowing how’; one result in 
that case was that a series of after-dinner speeches became 
personal and very moving confessions. To me it was often 
a matter of astonishment to observe how a man who had 
comparatively little acquaintance with him would receive 
at his hands orders for the toughest of tough jobs, and would 
go out eager to do it and, if need be, unhesitatingly to risk 
his life in the cause. 

This power to command was not a mere inherited genius, 
not an arbitrary gift of nature, but in the main something 
gradually and painfully acquired. It was something 
superimposed upon his natural characteristics. It may 
have been there in embryo from the beginning, from the 
time when he played soldiers in boyhood in the streets of 
Nottingham, and was usually captain, but it was quickened 
and refined by the work of the Holy Spirit in him and by 


A MANAGER OF MEN 83 


his own patient cultivation, the result of self-discipline, of 
concentrated quest, and of reliance on the help of God. 

But he did more than command his followers, he inspired 
them. He set to work to make them believe in themselves. 
He would have no part or lot in the ‘Oh, to be nothing, 
nothing,’ theory. He believed that all things were possible 
with the man who really gave himself up to God. He was 
not surprised at anything which might happen to that man. 
In dealing with his Officers he started out to make them 
believe that they could accomplish something greater than 
they had ever anticipated, or than any one had ever anti- 
cipated for them. He believed that every man was bigger 
than he thought himself to be—that every man had, so to 
speak, the making of a greater man in him, just as the bud 
enfolds the flower. He was always prepared to find the 
new man emerging to surprise the old. His own expecta- 
tions themselves helped to form and elicit that which was 
expected. I have seen him a hundred times produce the 
most marvellous changes in the whole outlook of a man, 
especially a young man. Such a one may have believed 
himself to be nobody in particular, and perhaps was very 
nearly right in that respect, but he has come out from 
William Booth’s presence with his head erect, knowing 
himself to be somebody, with a bit of work assigned to 
him which no one else could do, and for the time being he 
has regarded himself as one of the spear-points of the whole 
Army. 

To be able to inspire a man with confidence in himself 
is a great gift. Itis a sort of miracle, the extending of one- 
self upon another, making the listless eager, the sluggish 
quick, the timid resolute. The Founder was never afraid 
of the element of human worship in all this, because he 
ever kept looking himself and pointing others to the divine 
life and energy as the source of it all. Indeed, the fact 
that the Divine Spirit was all the time available for every 
man was the grand support of his own heart and mind in 
all that he did to inspire his fellows. 

Another characteristic which was largely contributory 
to his success in the management of men was his capacity 


84 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


for detail. Some of those who saw him amid his various 
activities might have supposed that his achievements cost 
him little or nothing, ‘came natural’ to him, in a word. 
That would be a great mistake. Like other men, he toiled 
on step by step. When, for example, he has been writing 
an article | have known him go over a passage many times, 
like a lapidary polishing a precious stone, in order to bring 
it to his satisfaction. I have said to him, ‘ My dear General, 
you have done enough at this. That will do.’ His answer, 
in his playful, half-testy way, has been, ‘ Chief, I am not 
writing to please you.’ 

It was just the same with his dealings with individual 
men. In a letter written in his seventy-sixth year he said, 
“IT am more than ever impressed by the idea that we must 
do more for the staff, and I can see at present no better 
way of helping them than to go about amongst them and 
show them how to meet their difficulties one by one.’ This 
master of assemblies was a one-by-one man. It was not 
only in articles intended for the eyes of the thousand that 
he devoted scrupulous care to his phrasing, but in a letter 
intended for just one individual he would often draft and 
re-drait half-a-dozen times, usually with his own pen, so 
that the phrases would convey the exact shade of meaning 
he wanted to convey and give rise to no misunderstanding. 

No doubt the recipients of such letters regarded them as 
ordinary epistles, struck off at the first attempt, simply 
because they fulfilled their purpose so well. But the truth 
was that—especially if they had to do with difficult personal 
questions—they had often cost him immense labour. The 
late hours of the night and the early hours of the morning 
were his favourite times for correspondence. He would 
often come home late from a Meeting, to all appearance 
tired out, and, as his biographer says, ‘would seek his 
writing-table as another man would seek his couch.’ 
Details which many men would call petty became to him 
of infinite importance because they concerned the well- 
being of one particular individual under his command, for 
whom he felt a responsibility. The care of military leaders 
has usually been for the regiment, rather than for the 


A MANAGER OF MEN 85 


individual, but The Salvation Army has not MSs built to 
that pattern. 

Another great quality which shone out in his leadership 
was his absolute justice. He knew no favouritism. Some 
people, of course, commended themselves to him more than 
others, some natures were more congenial. And, as it 
happened, not a few of those in whose company he found 
the most pleasure tormented him by their carelessness and 
transgressions! But whatever his personal liking or dis- 
liking, when it came to any question of privilege or honour, 
or anything which affected a man’s happiness or usefulness, 
his merely personal preferences became of no account. It 
did not matter who the man was, nor how near he might 
be to the General’s eye, his case was dealt with, or the 
appointment filled, or the difference adjusted solely in the 
interests of fair dealing and the advantage of The Army. 
He was out to do justice, to secure fairness, to establish 
equity in his ranks. Possibly here, too, he may have made 
mistakes, but, if so, the mistakes were not due to any 
conscious bias. In all my forty years’ experience of his 
work at the closest range I cannot charge my memory 
with a single case among the many thousands he dealt 
with in which he acted with anything approaching injustice. 
And when mistakes were subsequently seen to have been 
mistakes I think they generally caused him more suffering 
than they had ever caused anybody else. No man was 
more generous in admission of a blunder, or more unhappy 
until its consequences were repaired. 

It must not be inferred from what has already been 
written—and indeed it cannot be inferred by any one who 
has the smallest knowledge of the Founder’s later life—that 
all his dealings were with the rough and uncultured. He 
had to do with men who occupied very high positions in 
many countries. And it is an astonishing circumstance 
that William Booth, of humble birth, with very limited 
educational advantages, with no opportunity until he was 
well in middle-age of coming into contact with the leisured 
or polite classes, should nevertheless have been able to make 
himself at home with men of the university, of Parliament, 


86 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


of the Court, of the ‘City.’ He met them on common 
ground, he was not ‘awkward’ in their company; they 
found him interesting, and very often, before they were 
aware, he had slipped the leading strings on them, and was 
taking them whither he would. 

But this rare gift of adaptability was exercised equally 
in his dealings with the poorest creature of the street. He 
was more proud of the fact that he could, so to speak, 
break bread with the poor than that he could sit as an 
honoured guest at a dinner table in Park Lane. He had 
the infinite tact—if tact is the right word—which con- 
descends to men of low estate, without letting it appear 
to be condescension. In spite of many temptations, he 
always resisted, nay he hated, what he called the ‘ Nabob’ 
spirit. In this respect, no doubt, his kindly humour often 
came to his help. The man who has real humour is sure 
to have a saving humility and to be, at least to some extent, 
unspoiled. And his humour often got him to the heart of a 
situation. 

No matter whether he was dealing with the prodigal 
of the gutter or with a ruler who sought his advice, he was 
the same man, adaptable, though never opportunist, 
brotherly, though still careful of his position and authority, 
projecting himself by sympathy into the place of another, 
but never surrendering a principle to please or conciliate 
anybody. Everywhere he went, up and down the world, 
the people who faced him—their faces white, or brown, or 
black, or yellow, the setting a convict prison, a great 
auditorium, a council chamber, or a throne-room—knew 
that he belonged to them, was one of them— 


Men felt 
That in their midst a son of man there dwelt, 
Like and unlike them, and their friend through all. 


I want to make it plain that he laid himself out for this. 
He professed it. He was not concerned to disavow the 
compliment that he was remarkable in these matters, It 
was his boast that he had studied human nature, that he 
could read it like a book, that he could meet it on its own 


A MANAGER OF MEN 87 


levels, high or low. He was equally at home as the centre 
of an enthusiastic gathering of ten thousand people, or pre- 
siding over the hard bargaining of a Finance Council. The 
world in general saw his excellence in the one respect, it 
was given to only a few to see his excellence in the other. 
In later years, of course, much of the business side of Army 
work in every country was delegated to others, but when it 
came to the final bargain and the finish up those others 
always wanted to know that he was pleased. 

In a word, William Booth was a man who never lost an 
opportunity of making contact with his fellow-creatures. 
In a train he would have regarded it as shocking to ride hour 
after hour without a word to the other passengers. He 
would speak to the platelayers on the line when the train 
stopped at the signals, and to the inspectors and porters 
on the platform, and to the men on the engine. He could 
mix also with those who were in despair or profligacy and 
talk with them—real talk, not the asking of superior ques- 
tions. His knowledge of the drunkard and the criminal 
was obtained by first-hand acquaintance. Every creature 
was to him a rare book, occasionally gilt-edged, but more 
often very rough-cut indeed, and loose in the binding, and 
sometimes very difficult to decipher. 

The greatest of all his qualities in the management of 
men has been implied all along in what I have written, and 
yet I have not specifically named it. It was his love, his 
spirit of goodwill. In him this was a constant fountain of 
benevolence, seldom a sudden gush of feeling. The Founder 
was more benevolent than he was compassionate—I mean 
that his love went further back than the immediate appeal 
to the feelings, although the feelings were there—and was 
therefore a more dependable quality. 

His love for his fellows seemed boundless. It was not 
to be put off by the extreme unloveliness of some of those 
before whom it was poured out, nor by their ingratitude, 
nor their hardness of heart. It was like strong, kindly hands 
searching for the worst. He plunged into the underworld 
in quest of those whom others shunned or of whom they 
despaired. Here and there a great soul has gone to sublime 


88 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


levels because of the God-given love that was in his heart 
for his fellows, but William Booth went further than the 
sublime, he did not scruple to go to the verge of the ridi- 
culous if by any means he could save some. His wide- 
embracing and fervent ‘charity’ no criticism could stay, 
no rebuffs diminish, no hatred quench. Because of the love 
that was in him he dared, not only the anger of the world, 
but its laughter. 

I close this chapter—and my ‘ memories’ of him in this 
book—with some words from an address which he gave at 
one of the early gathering of Officers : 

‘The secret of our success is often inquired for, and here 
it is: it is not in gifts, or human learning, or exceptional 
opportunities, or in earthly advantages, but in a heart 
consumed with the flame of ardent, holy, heavenly love.’ 

Thank God, that 1s still ‘ the secret.’ 


XI 
SWEDEN AND ALL THE WORLD 


THE year 1878, in which our Movement took the name of 
The Salvation Army, was a year of great strain, upon me in 
particular. I was then twenty-two, and although I had 
recovered in a great measure from the weakness of my 
early teens, I was again physically in a thoroughly limp and 
shaken condition. Our friend Mr. Billups, of Cardiff, with 
whom and his wife my people had formed a friendship 
several years earlier, was then building a railway between 
the Swedish port of Halmstad, in the Cattegat, and Jén- 
koping, the great centre of the match industry of Sweden, a 
hundred miles from the coast. On this business he was 
going to stay there for a month or two with Mrs. Billups, 
and, seeing my run-down condition, they very kindly asked 
me to join them for a few weeks’ holiday, and not only 
received me as their guest in Sweden, but paid my travelling 
expenses. Accordingly I journeyed with them, via Dover 
and Ostend, my first Channel trip, and then — that 
Mrs. Billups should not be over-fatigued—by easy stages 
to Copenhagen and Malm6é. 

At Hamburg a trifling circumstance occurred, which, 
however, had its significance in view of what was to happen 
later. After dinner at the hotel on the evening of our 
arrival Mr. Billups invited me to go with him to a small 
Mission Hall, carried on, if I remember correctly, by a 
joint committee of English and German residents of 
Hamburg for the benefit of English sailors entering that 
port. We found the little place without much difficulty. 
Once there I became greatly interested in a group of German 
sailors who were watching with more or less attention the 
service conducted on behalf of their English mates. After 


89 


go ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


saying a few words to the English part of the audience, it 
occurred to me that I might also speak to the Germans 
if I could get any one to translate my words. Turning to 
I think it was the English Missionary in charge, I asked 
him if he could speak German, and learning that he could, 
I then addressed myself to the Germans present, giving my 
message sentence by sentence through my missionary 
friend. 

The meeting and all concerned with it soon passed from 
my thoughts in the experience of further travel, but I 
realized in a sort of presentiment that I had stumbled 
upon a method in which, by the use of interpreters, in a 
certain way, we might largely overcome our own limitations 
in the matter of speech, and address ourselves to any people 
in their own tongue. 

Our journey proceeded, the last Jap being by road, and 
a day or two later I found myself with my kind hosts estab- 
lished in a roomy farmhouse on the outskirts of a village on 
the lakeside at Wernamo, some fifteen miles from J6n- 
koping, and on the railway line which Mr. Billups was 
constructing. After afew days I began to feel uncomfortable 
because the farmer’s wife and the servants could take no 
part in the English family prayers, which I was in the habit 
of conducting at the suggestion of my good host. On think- 
ing the matter over, it occurred to me that, in spite of the 
language difficulty, it might be well if they were invited to 
be present. This was arranged, and the servants at once 
began to show interest. They used Swedish Bibles, though, 
of course, our reading and prayer were in English, which 
they did not understand. 

On the second or third morning one of the maids asked 
permission for her father, who was working on the farm, to 
come in, and this was granted, and on the following morning 
another of the servants was particularly impressed, even to 
distress of mind. We learned after some trouble that this 
young woman had been moved by the realization of her 
sins. 

These circumstances encouraged me, much to the 
delight of Mrs. Billups, to persevere in our little effort ; and 


SWEDEN AND ALL THE WORLD QI 


obtaining the assistance of Mr. Billups’s manager—a rough 
Englishman of the navvy type, who showed little or no 
sympathy with religion—I started out to discover whether 
some one could be found in the neighbourhood who spoke 
both English and Swedish. We made our way to the bank 
where Mr. Billups transacted his business, and here, to my 
great satisfaction, we found a Scotsman, named Duncan, 
who could speak both languages. I introduced myself, and 
asked him if he would be so very kind as to come to the 
farm house for two or three mornings to read to us in Swedish 
‘from the Bible, and to translate for me sentence by sen- 
tence anything that I might wish to say in prayer. After 
a little persuasion, he gave a reluctant consent, and on the 
following morning we made a start. 

It was in that room, where the small company included 
Mr. and Mrs. Billups, the latter’s attendant, the farmer’s 
wife, the three maids, the father of one of them, and Duncan 
the Scotsman, that was begun that method of testimony 
and appeal and instruction which has since been carried 
all over the world by The Salvation Army, and which has 
given us the ear of multitudes in many lands, both East 
and West, even though the speakers knew no language 
except their own. Had we all been accomplished linguists, 
with half the languages of the world at our command. 
we should still have had a stammering tongue compared 
with the direct and open speech whereby, through this 
method, Salvation truths have been proclaimed around the 
globe. 

On this first morning Duncan read verse by verse with 
me. I then made a few remarks, specially directed, | must 
say, to the maid who had appeared in distress of mind on 
the previous occasion, and he translated them, though very 
nervously, sentence by sentence. At the conclusion of 
prayers we found the young woman really broken down 
in a spirit of repentance towards God. We sent away the 
others, and Mrs. Billups and I and the translator remained 
and tried to point her to the Atonement and the promise 
of sins forgiven. We did not succeed that day, but shortly 
afterwards she and others were wonderfully delivered from 


g2 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


condemnation and fear, and, in what we now recognize 
as Salvation Army fashion, began to speak to those around 
of what God had done. 

This new development was altogether so unexpected 
that, small though it was, we could not but be impressed 
by the thought that the hand of God was in it. I was at 
once asked to conduct evening prayers at an hour when 
other workers also could attend, and after only one or two 
days we had an evening attendance of, perhaps, thirty people, 
some of whom began to seek after God. The room available 
was too small, and we obtained permission to use a large 
room at the post office once or twice, which also was quickly 
crowded. 

Among others who received a revelation from on high 
which changed the character of their future was the post- 
mistress herself. Her name—one which has come to be 
revered in Army annals—was Hanna Ouchterlony, a remark- 
able woman, who came of one of the old Swedish military 
families. Of striking personality and courageous spirit, she 
had already proved her mettle in connexion with the 
Woman’s Movement in Sweden, and she afterwards became 
the first Officer of The Salvation Army in that country, and 
its pioneer leader for nine or ten years, during which time 
she was instrumental in accomplishing a really national 
work for God and righteousness. ? 

The room at the post office being too small, Mr. Billups 
fitted up the unfinished booking office of the new railway 
station with a platform and rough seating, and here I 
spoke twice daily for about a fortnight, still with the aid of 
my interpreter, the Scotsman. Among others to be greatly 
blessed in the meetings was the Scotsman’s wife, a Swedish 
lady, the daughter of the Governor of the province. Several 
other people of importance in the locality were influenced, 
as well as many of humbler station. 

Once again we outgrew our accommodation, and at last 
a Mission House, seating about five hundred people, was 
placed at my disposal. Here for some ten days I conducted 


1 Commissioner Hanna Ouchterlony, after some years of honoured 
retirement, died in 1924. 


SWEDEN AND ALL THE WORLD 93 


one or two meetings a day. There would have been no 
difficulty, so far as attendances were concerned, about 
holding an even larger number of services, but I was sup- 
posed to be on furlough, recruiting my overworked nervous 
system! Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed this unpre- 
meditated campaign, including the small day meetings, 
which were held in the homes of several of the converts who 
lived at a distance from the little town, and who liked me 
to go to their homes in order that I might speak at close 
quarters with their neighbours. On its small scale, it was 
quite an important awakening, and out of it came not only 
Commissioner Ouchterlony’s dedication to our service, but 
other important influences which to this day are traceable 
in our Scandinavian ranks. 

I was happy in this unlooked-for effort, and greatly 
interested in the people—especially in those who had been 
blessed in the way I have described. In a letter, written to 
Mrs. Billups, from Malmé, the day after I left Wernamo 
on my return to London, and which I found among the 
correspondence she sent me shortly before her death, I see 
that I thus described my feelings : 

I could not tell you, if I tried to do so, how much I have felt 
leaving the Wernamo friends. I felt on Sunday afternoon in that 
Mission House as though my inmost soul was knit with theirs. 
I do not think I have ever felt drawn out to yearn over people 
more, and seldom so much, and doubly so, of course, for those 
who have taken Jesus Christ. I was unduly anxious about them 
in the night and this morning, and could not help feeling 
(realizing) what trials of faith and courage are before them all, 
and there is no one strong to fall back upon. I asked the Lord 
to speak a word of quietness to me, and, opening my Bible, my 
eyes rested on, ‘And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of 
Hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels, and I will spare 
them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him... .” 

How slow we are to confide in God, and how slow of heart 
still are even we to believe all that the prophets have 
Spoken 2 04; 

The Lord give you, dear Mrs. Billups, more and more of 
the pertinacity and violence of faith... . 


Yours by His mercy, 
W. BRAMWELL Boortu. 


94 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


The Swedes attracted me greatly. Young as I was, and 
entirely without experience of other nationalities which 
could serve me as a basis for comparison, I began to see in 
them at that time what I have since proved to be their 
distinguishing qualities, both the very good and the less 
good. I discovered at once in them what I can only describe 
as a certain intellectual clarity—a resilience of mind— 
which enabled them to apprehend spiritual things in a way 
that is not the case with all peoples. There seemed to me 
to be fewer twists and turns and tergiversations in the 
Scandinavian mentality, and especially the Swedish, than in 
that of some other nationalities. I have noticed a similar 
thing in parts of Scotland. I know no audience to whom 
it is a greater intellectual pleasure to speak than an audience 
of northern Scotch—say in Aberdeen, Inverness, or Dingwall; 
not because they are demonstrative or even very responsive 
to personal appeal, but because the speaker is sure that there 
is at least intellectual sympathy between himself and his 
listeners ; that their thoughts are not constantly running off 
at tangents, but that they open their minds and weigh his 
words from start to finish. 

All this I discerned in the Swede. Inexperienced as lI 
was, and in spite of the fact that the work with which I was 
connected had not up to that time gone beyond the limits 
of the Old Country, I at once saw Sweden as a new field. 
I was taken also with the Swedish combination of spiritual 
insight with genuine emotion. Their nature had both sub- 
stance and warmth. No doubt, then as now, they were not 
free from some drawbacks attaching to emotionalism, but 
they certainly gave promise—a promise which has been 
abundantly fulfilled in our subsequent experience of them 
—of doing a great work as the result of a sanctified emotion. 

Much is written and said in deprecation of feeling in 
religion ; but, when all is said and done, the emotions do 
spring from the depths of our nature, and the attempt to 
divorce religion from them is really absurd. The idea that 
the feelings must for ever be mistrusted and denied has 
probably had more to do with the production of frigidness 
and formality in religion than any other single thing. 


SWEDEN AND ALL THE WORLD 95 


I defy any man to read the Bible with an open mind, 
especially the Old Testament, with its psalms and pro- 
phecies, without realizing that God intended the emotions 
to play a great part in action and experience, not only in 
our personal communion with Him, but in the practical 
carrying out of His word of love and righteousness in daily 
life. ‘ O taste and see,’ said the Psalmist, ‘ that the Lord is 
good.’ How absurd to deny the precious feelings and affec- 
tions of which Jesus Christ Himself was so manifestly an 
example. We know better than to flee from knowledge, 
but it has been well said, ‘ Christianity consists far more in 
having a full heart than in having a crowded head.’ 

A heart right in the sight of God is, in fact, the prime 
necessity of religion as revealed in the New Testament. 
What a man thinketh in his heart, that is he. ‘ The hidden 
man of the heart ’istherealman. Especially and constantly 
is the word heart used in the Bible of the emotion of affec- 
tion both towards man and towards God. It is there that 
the Kingdom of God is to be set up; that the life of Christ 
is to be seen in us; that the Fire of the Holy Ghost is to 
come, and enthroned there the love of God and man is to 
govern our lives. As well might one seek to live without 
life and spirit as to love without feeling. 

The work of The Army in Scandinavia sprang from that 
little effort by the lakeside of Wernamo, and Scandinavia 
—in which term I here include Finland—has proved one of 
The Army’s very fruitful fields. Not only has that work 
been of immense service among the Scandinavian nations 
themselves, and brought blessing to the lives of multitudes 
in those northern lands, including the Lapps, but it has 
spread amongst the Scandinavian populations of the United 
States. And, thank God! it has been the means of raising 
up from those various peoples hundreds of valiant souls 
who have gone forth into the dangers and difficulties of 
the dark lands—some to lay down their lives without 
question for the lost. Few things give me greater satis- 
faction about the work of The Army in any country than 
the missionary effort which it produces and the blessings 
which it disperses into. the heathen world. And next to 


96 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


England—-which, of course, has had special advantages in 
the fact that it was the land of The Army’s original foun- 
dation, and that it has had a longer time in which to prepare 
and develop its missionary enterprise—Sweden, Norway, 
Denmark, and Finland have, in the experience of The Army, 
produced the greatest results along this particular line. 

When some time ago I was leaving the King of Sweden, 
at the termination of an interview with him in Stockholm, 
he said to me with great earnestness that he wanted to 
thank me for the work The Salvation Army had accom- 
plished amongst his people, and to express his desire that 
that work should make still further progress. It was with 
serious purpose and also with great satisfaction that I was 
able to answer him, ‘ And I thank you, Sir, and through 
you the Swedish people, for the noble and splendid spirits 
Sweden has given to aid us in the extension of the work of 
God among the non-Christian peoples.’ 


XII 
SomME METHODS OF ARREST 


ONE night, after a meeting I had been holding in the West 
End of London, several members of The Army were person- 
ally introduced to me. Among them was a man of perhaps 
forty-eight or fifty; one, I think, of our Local Officers. 
I asked him how he came into The Army. ‘I was ina 
miserable state,’ he told me. ‘I had wasted a great part 
of my life. And then a very unusual, even remarkable 
thing happened, which led to my conversion. One evening 
I was wandering aimlessly across Hyde Park when I was 
attracted by a crowd in the middle of which was a man 
shouting out something. It proved to be an Open-Air 
Meeting of The Salvation Army. I waited on the edge of 
the crowd for a little while, not paying much attention, and 
presently I turned away. As I did so, the speaker shouted 
out, ““ Now, remember what I said,” quoting a passage, and 
then crying out, very loudly and emphatically, “ JOHN, 
THREE AND SIXTEEN!” Those words, “ JOHN, THREE AND 
SIXTEEN,” electrified me. I went home, but not to rest. 
In fact, I knew no rest until I had come to God, and by 
His grace was anew man.’ ‘ But,’ I said, somewhat puzzled, 
“What was there about the words “ John, Three and Six- 
teen ’’ which had this effect on you? Did you turn to the 
passage?” ‘Well, you see, Chief,’ was his reply, ‘my 
name is John; I have been married three times; and I 
have had sixteen children !’ 

I met with a somewhat similar case, illustrating the 
extraordinary way in which souls may be roused from 
lethargy, some years ago in Leeds. A fully uniformed 
Salvationist came up to me and said, ‘ You don’t remember 
me?’ I had to say that I did not. ‘I was converted,’ he 


H 97 


98 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


went on, ‘at one of your meetings in London. It was an 
All-Night of Prayer at Stratford.’ ‘ Yes,’ I said, recalling 
some remarkable episodes of a night of prayer there, ‘ how 
did it come about?’ ‘ Well,’ he replied, ‘I was saved 
really by a snore.’ ‘Saved by a snore!’ I repeated in 
astonishment. ‘ Yes,’ he said, ‘by a man snoring. I went 
to the All-Night of Prayer out of curiosity, just to see what 
you did. I took a seat rather towards the back of the 
building. In the course of the night I fell asleep. I was 
roused out of my sleep by a violent snore in my neighbour- 
hood. This I found to proceed from another man in the 
seat in front of mine. I woke up startled, not realizing 
where I was, and, jumping to my feet, made my way to the 
aisle. At that moment the Officer who was leading the 
second meeting for you shouted at the top of his voice, 
“Here’s another soul for Jesus!’’ Then a second Officer 
at the end of my row seized me, and led me almost dazed 
to the penitent-form. I was thoroughly aroused now by the 
extraordinary circumstances which had brought me to my 
knees, I reflected on what I had heard in the earlier part of 
the service, and I did honestly begin to search my heart and 
think of my life of sin. In the end, I gave myself to God, 
He pardoned me, I became a Salvationist, and here I am.’ 

The old General used to tell a story of a man in South 
Africa who was exceedingly successful in dealing with mule 
teams. Asked how he managed these stubborn creatures, 
he said, ‘ Well, when they stop and won’t go on, I just pick 
up a handful of grav<l or soil, put it to their mouths, and let 
them taste it. Of course, they spit it out again; but, asa 
rule, they begin to go on.’ ‘ Why do you think it has that 
effect on them ?’ persisted his questioner. ‘ Well, I don’t 
know,’ was the reply, ‘ but I expect it changes the current 
of their thoughts ! ’ 

There is a philosophy in this. Do some of our methods, 
which appear erratic and irrelevant, need any apology after 
all? Their connexion with spiritual things may not be 
immediately traceable, but if they shock and startle men, 
wake them up and turn them right about, have they not 
their purpose? The ordinary materialistic monotony of 


SOME METHODS OF ARREST 99 


life induces such a stupor that the spirit has often to be 
stabbed awake. The thing which snaps the coiling thread 
of the humdrum has its justification in the result. It 
‘changes the current of their thoughts.’ 

When people have told me that they have found Salva- 
tion or some other blessing on hearing my addresses, I have 
often discovered on further inquiry that what actually 
enlightened them or met their difficulty or turned them to 
Christ was not some great truth I had propounded, not some 
striking thought to which I had perhaps given a little extra 
emphasis, not a careful and arousing passage; but, on the 
contrary, some quite simple and detached circumstance, 
a forgotten phrase, a chance aside, a passing allusion. One 
woman, for example, came and told me that she had given 
herself to God through a quite incidental reference I had 
made in an address to the previous evening’s sunset. It 
reminded her, she said, of the sunsets of long ago as she 
used to see them in her village home when she was a girl 
and went to Sunday school, and thus her heart woke up to 
desire and seek after God. In such apparently casual ways 
the truth finds admission. Can it be doubted that this is 
the philosophy which underlies some of the extraordinary 
proceedings on the part of the ancient prophets and kings ? 
The breaking of pitchers and other outlandish things which 
were done in the presence of the people were not mere 
symbolism. They were means of arrest. They were sudden 
diversions. Their purpose was to secure the attention of 
the thoughtless, the forgetful, the preposessed. To use a 
very modern figure, they were the last jerk of the crank 
handle which availed to start the engine. 

No doubt this explains some of our success. We had 
one man, for example, who, despairing of getting the people 
otherwise to hear him, went every night during a week in 
winter and lay down in the market-place in the snow, 
remaining there for three-quarters of an hour without saying 
a word. By the end of the week half the population had 
gone out to see him, and then he got up and talked to them, 
and talked with effect. We had another man who even went 
so far as to ‘ play ghost’ in order to get the people within 


I0o ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


sound of the Gospel. The Army records to this very day, 
are rich with the stories of men who did strange things, things 
which others could not have done because of their timidity 
of spirit or their sense of propriety. It is easy to scoff at 
what they did; often it has been difficult to defend, some- 
times we have had to disapprove and restrain, but there is 
a true psychology behind it. It is another instance of the 
foolish things of the world confounding the wise. The trouble 
with conventional religion is that it is not ‘ foolish’ enough. 
It is too dainty in its choice of weapons to get to the heart 
of the ungodly. It thinks that everything must be solemn 
and proper and in good taste if it is to be effective. It for- 
gets that in almost the literal sense people have to be 
wakened before their souls can be won. The Salvation Army 
might itself have been stiffened by the starch of respecta- 
bility had it not been for some enthusiasts who have not 
hesitated to strike away from the beaten track, and counted 
it a light thing to suffer ridicule. I think of many a man 
who helped to set us loose, Dowdle and his fiddle, the Neals 
and their preaching and song, Cadman and his amazing 
displays, Corbridge and his announcements. One of Cor- 
bridge’s little railway tickets : 





HALLELUJAH RAILWAY 
LEICESTER TO HEAVEN 


FIRST CLASS 


1877 


is before me now. On the back of it are the words: ‘ Con- 
ditions fully explained at every service by Corbridge, the 
real old Hallelujah Man, and crowds of Blood-washed 
passengers.” Another handbill of a later period announces 
a “Great Fair at the Salvation Market,’ and among those 
billed to appear are Moorhouse and Bricky, Skelton the 
Thrasher, Wells the Converted Thief, and a score of others 
described with similar force and freedom. 

We in The Army have learned to thank God for eccen- 
tricity and extravagance, and to consecrate them to His 


SOME METHODS OF ARREST I0L 


service. We have men in our ranks who can rollick for the 
Lord. Often they have blundered, and occasionally they 
land us in awkward places. Some of them have been very 
rough and uncouth, and all that. I have never wanted to 
imitate what they did. I could not have done so. But 
they have enlarged my conception of the power of God and 
the mysteriousness of His ways. And I have felt less in- 
clined to shrink from doing some unusual thing myself 
because they on their part did not shrink from doing things 
far more unusual. Thank God for the dare-devils! They 
led us on the forward march. Their freedom of attack has 
brought, and still brings, within our reach the very people 
we most want. They have helped to keep us free from the 
shackles of respectability. They keep us passionate. So 
that even such a writer as H. G. Wells, after saying that our 
‘shouts, clangour, trumpeting, gesticulations, and rhythmic 
pacings stun and dismay my nerves,’ can add, ‘I see God 
indubitably present in these excitements.’! 

I know, of course, what some of my scientific friends will 
say to this. But I may be permitted to reply to their views 
in the words of a great student of human life: 


. . . however convincingly it [science] may show us that religion 
is a clumsy term for describing emotional excitement, science itself 
cannot and does not save the lost and rescue the abandoned. Science 
cannot do this ; it knows how it is done, and yet cannot itself do the 
thing which it assures us is not a miracle ; and science does not do 
it, does not desire to do it, for the very reason that it lacks the 
religious impulse which alone can accomplish the miracle, the 
miracle not only of converting the people, but of making the con- 
version of the evil and the bad a passion of the life of the good 
and the virtuous. 


A method I have sometimes adopted in conducting an 
Army meeting is to be frankly emotional up to a certain 
point. I set out deliberately to create a certain impression 
upon the hearts of the people to whom I am speaking. I 
use various means to that end, some in one place, some in 
another, according to the audience and my own state of 
mind. I desire to produce that heart opening without 
which I believe it to be of little use making an appeal 

1 ‘God the Invisible King.’ 


102 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


either to the intellect or the conscience. Then, when I have 
come to that point, I begin to produce the harder facts of 
my message. Having softened the wax, I press the die. 
Then can come a definite invitation to resolve, to act, and 
an opportunity to do it then and there. For myself, I do 
not even then, in this sternest phase of the battle, rigidly 
exclude the relation of a fact or incident which may have an 
emotional bearing. But this is not done with the same 
object as at the opening. The object now is to fortify the 
people so that they may overcome the immediate diffi- 
culties and hesitancies which are the impeding work of the 
enemy of souls. Therefore I tell of the power of Christ’s 
love to change. I use whatever comes handiest to urge 
them to the final step. I bid them with all the tenderness 
I can muster come and make the great surrender, come and 
find the great Salvation. And, thank God, they come! 


XIII 
STORIES OF THE ARMY’S TREASURY 


Many stories could be told of mysterious gifts received 
from strangers for The Army. Once a man, then quite 
unknown to us, called at Headquarters and said, ‘I want 
to see Mr. Bramwell Booth.’ He was shown up to me, 
and he told me his name, and said: 

“I have been very much interested in the work you are 
doing, although I wish you were not so much mixed up with 
disturbances. I want to give you a thousand pounds.’ 

He brought out his cheque, and after I had thanked 
him, I asked him how he had first come to be interested in 
us. 

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I will tell you. Some time ago I was 
walking down Aldersgate Street, and I noticed on the other 
side of the road a costermonger loading sacks of scrap iron 
on to a barrow. One of the sacks was apparently too 
heavy for him to lift, and a tall man wearing a silk hat 
stopped and put up the sack for the old costermonger and 
said a word to him. I was so much interested that I asked 
a policeman who was near by to tell me who it was that had 
assisted the costermonger. ‘“‘ Oh, don’t you know ?”’ said 
the policeman; “ that’s General Booth.” ‘ Well,” I said 
to myself, “if that is the spirit of The Salvation Army, 
then I shall help it as I have opportunity.” ’ 

The same benefactor gave us further help afterwards. 
He had a friend, a man nearly blind, who came to our 
Meetings occasionally, where he was deeply interested and 
blessed. One day this gentleman called at Headquarters, 
seeking me, and said: 

“Look here, I am going to give something to your work. 
How are you off for funds ? ’ 


103 


104 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


‘We are really very hard pressed just now,’ I said. ‘I 
have been praying the Lord to send us along some help, 
and I have no doubt He has sent you.’ 

Then he took out of his pocket-book a cheque, and held 
it up close to his eyes. 

‘It is signed,’ he said. ‘ Fill it in and make it payable 
to The Army.’ 

‘How much shall I make it payable for?’ I asked 
him. 

‘Well,’ he said, ‘ what do you think ?’ 

‘I leave it to you.’ 

‘Fill it up, then, for what you think the Lord would 
have me give you.’ 

I remembered that he was a rather wealthy man, but, 
still, I did not know much about him, and I cast my mind 
upwards for help in this emergency. 

‘Shall we say a thousand pounds ?’ [ said at last. 

‘Well—yes,’ he replied rather hesitatingly; ‘as you 
have only said one thousand pounds, we will make it one 
thousand.’ 

I am afraid my pleasure in receiving the gift was dashed 
a little by regret that I had not said five ! 

Wonderful indeed have been the answers to prayer in 
special predicaments. Sometimes in bygone days I have 
signed cheques, and stood them up against the inkpot, 
saying, ‘I cannot let them go until the Lord has sent along 
the wherewithal to meet them.’ And even while I have 
been waiting at Headquarters casting up my heart to God 
for help, people have called and said, ‘ I feel the Lord would 
have me come and give you a hundred pounds ’—or two 
hundred pounds, or five hundred, as the case might be. 
That kind of thing has been repeated in practically every 
department of The Army, and in every land, and even in 
many a Corps. It ought to teach us to believe hard as 
well as work hard. 

Once I remember our good friend T. A. Denny coming in 
‘when we were in a tight financial squeeze. The old General 
was just off on one of his long-distance tours, and I was 
terribly tried about getting in money. 


STORIES OF THE ARMY’S TREASURY 105 


‘Now, Mr. Bramwell,’ said Denny, ‘ I hear from Beard’ 
—we had then a friend named Beard at Headquarters— 
“that you are very hard up as usual.’ 

‘That is true. Mr. Denny,’ I said; ‘ we are in a corner.’ 

‘I have never known you far from that corner,’ was his 
reply. ‘How much do you want? Will a_ thousand 
pounds be of any use to you?’ 

‘Of course it will be of use,’ I said, ‘ but it will not 
get me over this special difficulty.’ 

‘Then how much do you really want ?’ 

‘IT want four thousand.’ 

Denny took a cheque out of his pocket. 

‘Bramwell,’ he said, ‘I made it out for four thousand 
before I came along. I had an impression that that was 
what you wanted.’ 

‘Did Beard give you any idea of the sum ?’ I asked in 
amazement. 

‘No,’ he said, ‘nobody gave me any idea of it.’ 

To put it mildly, a remarkable coincidence ! 

When we were buying and altering the Congress Hall 
property at Clapton for our Training Work we had to raise 
some twenty-five thousand pounds, at that period of our 
history a very large sum. Sir William M‘Arthur, who was 
Lord Mayor of London in 1880, and a zealous Methodist, 
signed a letter on our behalf, which was sent to a number of 
leading Methodists. A few of the recipients were asked to 
come together and hear about the General’sscheme. One of 
them was Dr. James Wood, of Southport, a Methodist 
layman and a doctor of laws. The meeting was summoned 
for a Monday afternoon, and on the previous Saturday 
Dr. Wood came to see me and said that he was going to 
give us fifty pounds. After a little talk he decided, without 
any suggestion of mine, to double the proposed donation. 
I asked him, and he agreed, to come toa Holiness Breakfast 
the following morning at our Whitechapel Hall. We met 
in the City and walked to the Hall. About two hundred 
of our people were present. The doctor would not come 
to the platform, as I wished ; he insisted on sitting among 
the people. 


106 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


Next day, at the gathering at Headquarters, Dr. Wood 
set the ball rolling, after the General had outlined his scheme. 
Our Lancashire friend told how he had come up with his 
cheque already made out for fifty pounds. After hearing a 
little more of the work, he decided to make it a hundred 
pounds. But when he went on the previous day to one of 
the Meetings he found the enthusiasm and warmth of old- 
fashioned Methodism at its best. He explained that he had 
sat among the people for two reasons. ‘I wanted, in the 
first place, to see whether they were genuine working people 
who got their living with their hands. After I had looked 
at them and spoken to several, I had no doubt at all on 
that score. So far from getting anything out of this work, 
they contribute to its support. The other reason I sat 
amongst them was to see whether they were clean, and 
I am satisfied that they were. I could see that they 
had all washed their necks and ears. General, yours is 
a work of practical godliness. I shall give you a thousand 
pounds.’ 

M’Arthur gave a thousand guineas, and we got several 
thousand pounds as a result of that afternoon meeting. 
We put it down in no small measure to Dr. Wood’s scrutiny 
of our people in Whitechapel, and his discovery that they 
washed their necks and ears ! 

I have had quite as much satisfaction, however, in 
receiving small gifts from small people as in receiving bigger 
gifts from bigger people. I know that was true also of the 
Founder. It never ceased to be to him a source of pleasure 
that so large a proportion of The Army’s income was drawn 
from the masses. When Officers reported to him that there 
was no gold in the collection, he would often say, ‘ Well, 
never mind! There 1s plenty of copper.’ He did not dis- 
esteem the democratic coin. He knew that it often spoke of 
sacrifice as great as the more precious metal. 

And what the poor gave was not always ‘ copper.’ 

One day an elderly woman, a Soldier in one of our 
London Corps, wrote asking me for an interview. I was 
extremely busy at the time, and asked my secretary to write 
her and say that he would see her in my stead. She replied 


STORIES OF THE ARMY’S TREASURY 107 


by return, saying that she must see me herself. Accordingly 
she was asked to come. I went into the room where she was 
waiting, and she opened the conversation by saying : 

‘General, I have come to give you £100.’ 

I replied that that was very interesting, and looking at 
her thin garments and work-worn hands, and guessing that 
she earned a precarious livesihood, I said : 

‘And how did you get it ?’ 

Quick as thought she answered, ‘ General, excuse me, 
but I think that is my business !’ 

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘ but you are not in ordinary circumstances. 
[ do not like the idea of taking such a sum from you without 
knowing more about you.’ 

Then she told me. 

“When my husband died he left me £40—all his savings. 
We had both been brought to God in The Salvation Army, 
and the Lord has been good to us. Moreover, we had no one 
dependent onus. After he died, I began to go out cleaning, 
and I generally got one meal a day given me, so that I was 
able to put by sometimes a shilling and sometimes half a 
crown. Then, about two years ago, I thought I was living 
in too expensive a room. I paid six shillings a week for it. 
After praying about it, it came to me that by sharing my 
room with another lady, I might halve that rent. I did it. 
So, little by little, by the Lord’s goodness, I have added 
to that £40 until it has become {100. And now He has 
told me to come and give it to you to help on the work of 
The Army.’ 

‘Well,’ I said, ‘ Mrs. , this is very generous and 
good of you. But I do not feel quite happy about it. What 
is your age ?’ 

Bridling a little, she said, ‘ I think that is my business, 
too, General.’ 

‘Yes,’ I said, smiling at her bashful appearance, ‘ but 
you must tell me, because I am thinking of what the future 
may have for you.’ 

‘Well,’ she said, ‘ I am sixty-six, and when I am seventy 
I shall be receiving the old age pension, so that you need 
not trouble about me.’ 





108 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


After turning the matter over in my mind for a few 
moments, I said: 

‘Well, now, I don’t quite feel as if I ought to take this 
money from you, but I will tell you what I will do. I will 
receive it and enter it in our books under your name. And 
I will make an entry to the effect that should you be sick or 
in any way in need of it, you can at any time withdraw 
what you require. Should you not require it, and be taken 
to Heaven, it will fall entirely into The Army’s funds.’ 

But my suggestion encountered unexpected obstinacy in 
her. She was evidently surprised that I should raise any 
objection. 

‘If your father, our dear old General what’s in Heaven, 
had been here,’ she said, almost severely, ‘he would not 
have made all this fuss about taking my {100 for the work 
of The Army !’ 

So, after all, I had to yield the point, and when I knelt 
down beside her, and thanked God for the spirit He had 
put in her poor old heart I could not help but praise Him. . 
A lonely widow hidden away in the purlieus of the great 
city, toiling hard every day, adding slowly to her small 
store of savings, and then bringing them all into the treasury 
of her Lord. 

Many people will hardly believe it, but the old General 
had an instinctive dread of money. The Army has from 
the very first been widely associated in people’s minds with 
money-raising. Tens of thousands, especially in London, 
first heard of us through a queer music-hall chorus of the 
eighties : 

General Booth sends round the hat ; 


Samson was a strong man, 
But he wasn’t up to that ! 


The Founder said more about money, probably, than 
any other leader in the religious world. He also instituted 
a system under which money has been raised in quite con- 
siderable sums. Yet, for all that, he had an instinctive 
dread of it. It was a sort of constitutional fear of its power 
and tyranny. After the first ten or twelve years of the life 
of the Movement he never himself touched the money. All 


STORIES OF THE ARMY’S TREASURY 109 


his financial arrangements, though carried on, of course, 
in his name, were attended to by others. By 1878-9 I was 
already signing the cheques. He himself had nothing to do 
with them, although he insisted on exact returns and on 
knowing from time to time where we were financially, and 
he bore the heavy burden of money raising. 

This is not to say that he did not realize the necessity 
for exactness and economy in dealing with money, both 
private and public. He had great confidence in the public 
Auditors who have looked after our accounts. While he 
never took anything from the funds of The Army for 
himself, he was careful to have full accounts rendered to 
him by the publishers of his books. These works of his and 
of my mother’s—and later on her ‘ Life’—for a number of 
years largely supported them. On the establishment of 
“The War Cry,’ when some of our friends urged him to 
make that, at least, private property, and thus place 
himself and his family out of need, he declined the 
suggestion. I believe his will was worth a great deal to 
The Army funds. People woke up to the fact that this 
man, with legitimate opportunity to do so, had never 
enriched himself. 

He carried his financial diffidence to a point which 
many would regard as quixotic. Soon after the Mission 
started, in 1865, he had a Financial Guarantee Committee, 
of which Stephenson Blackwood and one or two other 
fairly well-known men were members. This Committee 
authorized the payment of his insurance premiums. When, 
later on, his books became a source of income, he paid 
these premiums himself, and a few years afterwards he 
asked the Auditors to make an estimate of the total sum 
paid during the years that they had been met by the 
Committee. They did so, and determined the amount 
at five hundred pounds, and this sum he handed over to the 
funds of The Army.? 

Mr. T. A. Denny, whom I have already mentioned, was 
one of several friends of like mind and heart. Henry Reed 


1See ‘ William Bact: the Founder of The Salvation Army by 
Harold Begbie, Vol. II, p. 131. pea : ih 


j ie 
& 


‘ 


ILO ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


was perhaps the first on the list. Another was Samuel 
Morley, then head of the great Nottingham firm of I. & R. 
Morley, who loved to consider himself a ‘ sleeping partner ’ 
in our work. He varied from time to time in his feelings, 
but one of the last things he did before his death was to 
give a couple of thousand for the extension of the Women’s 
Social Work in London. Then there were Mr. and 
Mrs. Billups, of Cardiff, and John and Richard Cory, of the 
same city, who knew and trusted ‘ the Booths’ before as 
well as after The Salvation Army was born. There were the 
Armitages (Farnley), who not only gave nobly up to the 
limit of their means, but came to the Meetings, and marched 
with the processions, helped with the penitents, and testified 
in the Holiness gatherings. There was Mrs. Freeman, from 
whom came many a ray of light amid the darkness of 
financial anxiety in the earliest days. And there were the 
Misses Wells, who not only brought of their wealth to help 
us, but joined The Army, donned its uniform, and gave up 
their luxurious home to live as simple Salvationists. Per- 
haps the most generous of all our helpers, though of a 
somewhat later period, was Frank Crossley, of Manchester, 
whose splendid gifts largely made possible the extension of 
The Army’s work in other lands during the late eighties. 
I wish he could know now what harvests have been reaped 
from the seed he helped us to sow ! 

With the development of The Army’s philanthropic work 
we had frequently to do with a different kind of benefactor. 
Men came forward to help us because of the downright 
common sense of some of our efforts for social amelioration, 
although perhaps they had no sympathy with, often no 
understanding of, our presentation of the Gospel. The very 
daring of the Founder’s schemes caught the interest of men 
who, in their own financial transactions, were accustomed to 
‘think big.” One such man was the late George Herring. 

George Herring began his career as a bookmaker. He 
was associated with that class of doubtful characters who 
frequent race meetings. To the end of his life, although 
probably one of the best-dressed men in London, he always 
gave a certain impression of being ‘ horsy.’ He made a 


STORIES OF THE ARMY’S TREASURY = 1112 


large sum of money on a particular race, and on the same 
day he ‘ cut’ the Turf. He came into the City, went on the 
Stock Exchange, and took up a branch of business connected 
with the floating of loans for foreign Governments. Of this, 
with a partner, he made a great success. Before he had 
reached middle life Herring was a wealthy man. 

We first came across him on the publication of ‘In 
Darkest England and the Way Out,’ in 1890. He came to 
see us, and at once said that he would put up {10,000 of the 
money required to purchase the proposed Land Colony. 
He made very many excursions with one of our Officers 
seeking land. We finally decided that Hadleigh, in Essex, 
was the right place for us. Herring did not like the land, 
however, and accordingly his ten thousand came to nothing. 
He then rather drew off from us for some time. He was 
chaffed a good deal by his friends about his Salvation Army 
experiences. In our later intimacy we learned that one of 
his chums who thought to make fun of him sent him as a 
Christmas box a Salvation Soldier’s cap. This joke pleased 
him greatly, but in a different way from that which the 
sender anticipated. He had an elegant glass-case made, in 
which he placed this cap as one of the ornaments in the 
drawing-room at his beautiful hunting lodge near Luton. 
He often explained to his friends how the cap came into 
his possession, and how he only wished that he was worthy 
to wear it. 

Later on he became very much interested in our proposal 
for housing the people on a scheme of higher-class Shelters. 
He got much more intimate with us all, especially with the 
Founder and myself and the late Commissioner Sturgess. 
He went to our Shelters, attended Meetings, tramped about 
with us at midnight, and gave considerable sums towards 
new and enlarged premises. The General and the ‘ Bloater,’ 
as his familiars called him, taking liberty with his name, 
became quite good friends, and he was probably the only 
Society person in London with whom the General ever 
‘dined out.’ This was at Herring’s town house in Hamilton 
Place, Piccadilly. 

The last time Herring was at Headquarters he bade the 


Pr ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


old General a cheery good-bye, and was so delighted with 
his youthful optimism and plans that he called up the lift 
as it was carrying him down, ‘ Good-bye, I thought you 
were twenty-six, and I see you are only about nineteen !’ 
Herring was at the foundation of a small-holding scheme 
which we inaugurated at his suggestion. He found about 
forty thousand pounds for it, but as the later developments 
of that scheme come within my own period of Generalship, 
the story must await another occasion. 

George Herring was a singularly unassuming man. In 
my own intercourse with him he never presumed to dictate 
or to instruct me even as to matters on which I wished 
to defer to him. I had more than one talk with him on 
spiritual things, though I fear I did not make very much 
progress. I remember well the occasion of our last meeting. 
We had been discussing at some length the plans for the 
small-holding settlement, and I passed to some very serious 
words about eternal things. He seemed touched, and as 
he left me I said, ‘ Well, Mr. Herring, I shall pray for you.’ 
He paused at the door, and came back to my table, and 
alter a moment’s hesitation said with great seriousness, 
“No, don’t bother about me. I’m not worth it.’ I wonder 
whether I ought to have been more earnest that day ! 

The story of Army finance recalls our critics as well as 
our friends. One of these critics was Henry Labouchere, 
the editor of ‘Truth.’ Labouchere began by belabouring 
The Army, saying that we had no accounts to show, and so 
forth, and Charles Bradlaugh, his colleague in the repre- 
sentation of Northampton, dotted his ‘i’s’ and crossed his 
‘t’s.’ One morning there was brought to me a cutting from 
‘Truth ’ which abused us with more definiteness than usual. 
Forthwith I put the cutting into the hands of one of our 
Staff, and the man himself into a hansom, and told him, in 
effect, that he was not to come back until he brought 
Labouchere with him. 

If his instructions did not go quite so far with regard to 
‘knocking down or locking up’ as those which were given 
to Sam Weller when he set out to secure Mr. Winkle, they 
were more effective. LLabouchere came to Headquarters. 


SPORIES OF THE ARMY'S TREASURY 1133 


In the meantime I had communicated with our auditors, 
and one of the partners came over. Everything was in 
readiness for ‘ Labby’s’ inspection, and he spent a useful 
hour and a half going over the books, examining the 
vouchers, and talking to members of the Staff. 

I do not pretend that Labouchere ever came to the 
penitent-form, but from that time onwards he was more 
or less a friend. He occasionally helped us in an appeal for 
money, signing one or two ‘ round robins’ which we issued ; 
but the chief value of his countenance to us was in the fact 
that he was so great an authority on such matters that 
when he took a thing up and even faintly praised it people 
accepted its credentials right away. Bradlaugh we never 
succeeded in ‘ converting.’ One of his exclamations on his 
death-bed was, ‘ Oh, General Booth’s accounts !’ 

The secret behind Army finance is not expressed in the 
word ‘ genius,’ nor even in ‘ prevision’; it is the result of 
faith in God. Our Movement was born in absolute penury. 
Nobody connected with it at the start, from the Founder 
downwards, possessed a spare sovereign. Yet money was a 
necessity. Buildings must be erected or hired. The poor 
and neglected must be cared for. Evangelists or leaders 
must be provided with their daily bread. The work must 
be made known. Casual gifts, the result of occasional 
appeals, were forthcoming; but these meant only spasmodic 
and disconnected efforts. We could not make any great 
show with the scissors when we were so uncertain of the 
cloth. The Founder saw that the work must be made, so 
far as was possible, to be self-supporting. 

But ours was, and still is, a very poor community. The 
people lived from hand to mouth themselves. Few of the 
stations became self-maintaining in the first years. The 
money they raised had to be supplemented from the centre. 
By 1880, nevertheless, we had abundantly proved that the 
little communities in the different localities could, as a 
general rule, be supported by the people’s own gifts and 
exertions. No doubt many of our Officers did suffer great 
privations in establishing this principle, often because they 


were so keen upon their work that they would not apply 
I 


114 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


for the provision which was available for them. But the 
principle of self-support within each community once 
accepted has become widely adopted, and has answered 
beyond all expectations. 

We unite with this principle of self-support the further 
principle that the strong must help the weak, or, rather, 
that the strong and the weak must help each other. The 
earliest form by which we tried to raise money for work 
other than that carried on among the people from whom we 
begged it, was by what were called Quarterly Collections. 
The amount thus collected once in three months at each 
Station was set apart for mew work. Later came the Self- 
Denial Fund. That Fund came out of a remark of Major 
(now Commissioner) Carleton on the platform of the old 
Exeter Hall, to the effect that he proposed ‘ to give up his 
pudding’ for a certain period in aid of the Funds. ‘ Why 
not have an annual effort,’ said the Founder, ‘in which 
every one shall be invited to perform some act of self- 
denial?’ But for this principle it would have been impos- 
sible either to begin or to carry on the missionary work 
of The Army. Every Territory contributes to the Fund, 
even those Territories which receive assistance from it 
towards their own missionary enterprise. 

Had it not been for this definite policy in connexion 
with our exchequer, The Army might never have broken 
its national boundaries, never have found opening before 
its tread the gates of the future. We have gone on the 
principle that if people have a religion worth having they 
will prove it by making some sacrifice to maintain it. And 
if it is the religion of Jesus Christ, they will want to extend 
it to their fellows, even to the uttermost parts of the earth. 


XIV 
THE MINOTAUR 


In the autumn of 1885 I was indicted at the Old Bailey 
—the Central Criminal Court of the United Kingdom— 
together with the late W. T. Stead, then editor of the 
“ Pall Mall Gazette,’ and certain other persons, on the charge _ 
of unlawfully taking Eliza Armstrong, aged thirteen, out 
of the possession of her parents and against their will. The 
other persons concerned in the alleged abduction were 
Rebecca Jarrett, a woman who had formerly kept a house 
of ill fame, and had reformed her life after coming under 
the influence of The Salvation Army; Elizabeth Combe, a 
Swiss Officer of The Army; and Mussabini, a Greek, who 
had taken the name of Sampson Jacques, and had assisted 
Stead in the investigations. There was a further charge 
against Stead, Jarrett, and Jacques, together with one 
Madame Mourez, a procuress, of being concerned in an 
assault on the child in question. 

The case was tried before Mr. Justice Lopes and a 
common jury. Mr. Justice Lopes, who afterwards became 
Lord Ludlow, was said to have exceptional ability in a 
certain class of case, but not even his closest legal friend 
would claim a place for him among the great lawyers of 
his time. Any distinction which the bench lacked, however, 
was fully made up in the well of the court. The then 
Attorney-General, Sir Richard Webster, who afterwards 
became Lord Alverstone and Lord Chief Justice of England, 
led the prosecution for the crown, and with him were 
Mr. (now Sir Harry) Poland and Mr. R. S. Wright, then 
M.P. for Norwich, and afterwards a very able judge of the 
QOueen’s Bench. On our side another future Lord Chief, 
then simply Mr. Charles Russell, appeared for Rebecca 


115 


116 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


Jarrett. He was the outstanding figure in the defence, and 
showed the conspicuous qualities for which the name of 
Lord Russell of Killowen will long be remembered in the 
annals of bench and bar. His junior was Mr. Charles 
Matthews, afterwards Public Prosecutor. My own counsel 
was Mr. S. D. Waddy, Q.C., later a judge of the County 
Court, and with him were Mr. Horne Payne and Mr. R. F. 
Colam. Mr. Sutherst was for Mrs. Combe, while Jacques’s 
principal counsel was Mr. Henry Matthews, who became 
Home Secretary in Lord Salisbury’s Government, and after- 
wards was raised to the. peerage as Viscount Llandaff. 
Stead defended himself, though his case was “‘ watched’ by 
Charles Matthews. 

The hearing occupied thirteen days in all, and seldom 
if ever can the Old Bailey have witnessed the unfolding of 
such a drama. The facts which were elicited created a 
profound sensation throughout the country, and, indeed, 
in many parts of the world. In the result I was acquitted ; 
the charge against Elizabeth Combe was dismissed before 
the case for the defence was even opened ; Stead was found 
guilty of abduction and of aiding and abetting in the 
assault, and was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment ; 
Jacques was acquitted on the first charge, but was found 
guilty of the same offence as Stead on the second, and was 
sentenced to one month’s imprisonment, and Jarrett was 
found guilty on both charges and sentenced to six months’ 
imprisonment. In all these cases the punishment was 
without hard labour, but Madame Mourez, whose case was 
in a different category, was sentenced to imprisonment with 
hard labour for six months. 

Behind this prosaic narration of names and facts isa 
somewhat important episode in the social history of modern 
England. The trial itself was an anti-climax; it was a 
cross-scent on the trail, and although, as I will explain pre- 
sently, it had its uses, particularly for The Salvation Army, 
it must not occupy the field to the exclusion of the real 
achievement, namely, the violent awakening of the public 
conscience which had already taken place on the subject 
of child prostitution, and the expression of that conscience 


THE MINOTAUR 117 


in the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 
1885. 

I am concerned mainly in these pages with my own and 
The Army’s share in the events of those agitating days, and 
I write simply from that point of view. 

From our earliest years as the Christian Mission, there 
came, occasionally, to our penitent-form in Whitechapel, 
unfortunate girls who looked to us for some means of 
enabling them to throw off the fetters of their deadly 
calling. Here and there kind women-comrades would fix 
up these poor creatures for a night or two, but that was 
only a very casual and uncertain method of dealing with 
the problem. Presently one motherly woman, a baker’s 
wife, who had already given up her front room to Magdalen, 
suggested to me that if only she had more accommodation 
she could take in these girls for a few days and look after 
them until they were passed on to some employment. 

Accordingly, The Army helping her, she and her husband 
took a larger cottage, which was soon given over entirely to 
this work, and another cottage was taken in addition. The 
name of Mrs. Cottrill, in her little home in a shabby East 
End street, is one to be handed down in honour to our 
Army posterity, not only for what she herself did, but for 
the mighty rescue work to which it led. To such humble 
souls there is reared no monument on earth, save the work 
of which they helped to lay the foundations, but surely 
there is a window set up in Heaven ! 

This work into which The Army, without any set pur- 
pose of its own, was gradually led, was placed under the 
personal supervision of Mrs. Bramwell Booth. Some time 
after my marriage, the Founder, talking with me of this 
new development, had said, ‘ What about Florrie ? ’ (mean- 
ing my wife). ‘She is very young, I know, but if she feels 
her heart drawn that way, then let her have charge.’ From 
this time forward my wife began to interest herself in these 
pitiful cases, and she was duly appointed to lead the new 
undertaking. 

Before she had been at her task for six months, it was 
brought home to her that a frightful state of things existed 


118 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


in London. She was prepared for the evidence of widespread 
prostitution, terrible as that is, but it came upon her as an 
appalling revelation to find that young girls—children, 
really, of thirteen and fourteen—were being entrapped by a 
vicious network of carefully devised agencies and in their 
innocence condemned to a life of shame. She declared 
further that there existed a regular traffic in these girls ; 
that it had widespread ramifications, both in England and 
on the Continent; that it was maintained by the most 
atrocious fraud and villainy, and involved such anguish 
and degradation as, in her opinion, could not be matched 
by any trade in human beings known to history. 

Those hideous facts greatly affected her, and during the 
first year or two of our married life, the skies were often 
overcast on this account. Where there should have been 
smiles and brightness there were often tears and sorrow. 
Thinking of the miseries of these poor creatures, Mrs. Booth 
cried herself to sleep night after night. She told me of the 
most harrowing incidents which had come to her knowledge. 
I tried to comfort her by suggesting that the stories were 
probably exaggerated ; that the credibility of these folks 
was not to be trusted too readily, and so on. But, pre- 
sently yielding to her entreaties, I said that I would look 
into the matter for myself. I made certain inquiries and 
interviewed one or two people. Among the latter was the 
then Chamberlain of the City of London, Mr. Benjamin 
Scott, who, in association with Mrs. Josephine Butler, had 
been attacking the Contagious Diseases Acts then in force. 
He said that he could well believe all that I heard from my 
wife, that it was a disgrace to civilization, and that some of 
the police winked at the betrayers and procurers. He 
expressed in his gentle, courteous way the hope that some- 
thing would be done. I answered him with emphasis that 
something would ! 

It was some little time after this that, on arriving at 
our offices in Queen Victoria Street one day, I was informed 
that the housekeeper when he opened the front gate at 
seven o’clock that morning had found a young girl outside 
who had told him an extraordinary story. The girl was 


THE MINOTAUR 11g 


brought to me, a decent, well-favoured girl of about seven- 
teen, wearing a very beautiful red silk dress. She told me 
that she had come up from the country to London in answer 
to an advertisement for a girl to help in the general work 
of a house, and had been received on arrival by the mistress 
who had answered her application. She soon found, how- 
ever, that she had been entrapped into a brothel. 

As the days went on her ‘mistress’ urged her with 
increasing force to be a ‘ lady ’ like the others in the house, 
gave her the red silk dress, and compelled her to visit a 
certain music-hall in her company. The girl resisted all 
importunities, but escape seemed to be impossible, and she 
did not know what to do or where to go. On the previous 
night a man had made himself very objectionable, where- 
upon she fled and barricaded herself in one of the kitchens, 
yielding neither to threats nor cajolery. After some time 
she heard the landlady say, “ Leave her there till morning ; 
she will come to her senses when she wants her breakfast.’ 
Left alone, the girl remembered amid her alarm and agita- 
tion that in her own town she had attended some meetings 
of The Salvation Army, and that in her box was an old 
song-book, which bore on its cover the address of General 
Booth. He was surely the one person in all the great city 
who would help her! It was four o’clock in the morning 
before everything was still in the house. She waited a 
while, and then crept up to her room, found the little red- 
covered song-book, and slipped out. Inquiring her way of 
a policeman, she walked from Pimlico to Queen Victoria 
Street, and remained outside the door of Headquarters 
until it was opened. 

The story was hard to believe, but there was the girl, 
who had been found outside the door between seven and 
eight o’clock that morning ; and there, moreover, was the 
dress, which obviously was not such as a mistress would 
provide for a domestic servant. 

I sent a man at once to the address from which she 
said that she had escaped. There they stated at first that 
they knew nothing of her, but when he told them that 
they were telling lies, and that he was an Officer of 


120 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


The Salvation Army, which already had the girl under its 
protection, they changed their tune. At last he got her 
box away, and we found further confirmation of her story. 
The incident made a great impression upon me, an impres- 
sion which was deepened further when a number of girls 
were brought up from Whitechapel by Mrs. Booth, and I 
had the opportunity of questioning them. One of them, 
about fourteen years old, manifestly enceinte, told a terrible 
story of how she had been met in the street by a very 
‘nice’ woman, taken to a music-hall, persuaded to meet 
her ‘friend’ again, and so dragged into virtual imprison- 
ment and the last outrage. 

All this caused me no little suffering and I resolved—and 
recorded my resolve on paper—that, no matter what the 
consequences might be, I would do all I could to stop these 
abominations, to rouse public opinion, to agitate for the 
improvement of the law, to bring to justice the adulterers 
and murderers of innocence, and to make a way of escape 
for the victims. 

It will be asked: Where, all this time, were the police ? 
Was there no law which could be invoked to scourge the 
offenders? The legislative position in 1885 was this: The 
House of Lords, to its credit, had already three times passed 
a Bill the primary object of which was to ensure greater 
protection for young girls and women, and particularly to 
raise the age at which a girl’s consent could free her seducer 
from responsibility. The age at that time, wickedly and 
absurdly, was thirteen! On the first two occasions the Bill, 
after passing the Upper House, met with some untimely 
fate in the Lower. It was passed for the third time by the 
Lords in the spring of this fateful year. 

We knew that the Government was very tepid on the 
whole question, and without the stimulus of popular 
agitation it seemed unlikely that the Bill would meet with 
any greater success on its third venture into the House of 
Commons than on its first or second. As a matter of fact, 
to anticipate a little, although Sir William Harcourt, whom 
we approached, lost no time in putting the Bill on the 
Orders of the House, it was talked out on the second reading 


THE MINOTAUR I2I 


early in May. Altogether an inglorious chapter in the 
records of the People’s Chamber ! 

The appeal, then, must be to the people themselves, 
whose heart and conscience, we were sure, had not been 
interpreted by their representatives in Parliament assembled. 

After some further conference with various friends, 
including Benjamin Scott and Mrs. Josephine Butler, I 
consulted W. T. Stead, and told him the facts of child 
enslavement and prostitution as they had come to our 
notice. I said that I and Mrs. Booth had looked into them 
sufficiently to feel that, although there might, here and 
there, be exaggerations, there was urgent need for the 
passing and the strengthening, if possible, of the measure 
then before Parliament. I asked him to give publicity to 
the business so that the Government should become aware 
of the pressure of public opinion. At first Stead hesitated. 
He had not been so very long in London, and though editor 
of the ‘ Pall Mall Gazette,’ was not perhaps so firmly in 
the saddle as afterwards. Finally, however, he came to 
Headquarters ; I introduced him there to Benjamin Scott, 
who explained the legal situation and also the Continental 
traffic, a branch of the iniquity with the history and detail 
of which he was specially familiar. After Scott had gone I 
told Stead that I had three or four women in the next room, 
together with a converted brothel-keeper, whom he might 
interview for himself. These women were brought in one by 
one, and Stead put them through their stories. Women I 
call them, but, with the exception of Rebecca Jarrett, they 
were all under sixteen. 

When the interrogatories were ended and the girls had 
withdrawn, there was a pause, and I looked at Stead. He 
was evidently deeply moved by what he had heard. It 
had shaken his vehement nature, and presently his feelings 
found vent. Raising his fist, he brought it down on my 
table with a mighty bang, so that the very inkpots shivered, 
and he uttered one word, the word ‘Damn!’ This explo- 
sion over, I said, ‘ Yes, that is all very well, but it will not 
help us. The first thing to do is to get the facts in such a 
form that we can publish them.’ Stead agreed; we not 


122 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


only took counsel together, we prayed together, and then 
he went away. 

A period of consideration, during which Stead conferred 
with one or two friends, including Mrs. Butler, followed.} 
Ultimately we had another meeting at Headquarters and 
decided that the best thing to do would be to examine the 
situation, independently of the evidence of the injured girls 
whom we had collected. Stead wanted to obtain first-hand 
information. I provided a woman who actually went and 
placed herself in a brothel as though she were a woman of 
doubtful character, and lived there for ten days, reporting 
what happened. This beautiful and fearless girl carried. 
through the scheme with complete satisfaction. We 


i Mrs. Josephine Butler, one of the pioneers of freedom for women, 
the wife of Canon Butler, of Winchester, had been long and deeply con- 
cerned about the very painful conditions prevailing in some Continental 
countries, and she entered with enthusiasm into our campaign. Her one 
fear was that we should delay the publication of what we discovered, 
and she urged us to make public the facts already at our disposal before 
the then approaching General Election. The following, from a letter from 
Winchester, June 11, 1885, shows something of her feeling: 


_‘ My dear Mr. Bramwell, 


‘I have received your letter; thanks. I wish I could have seen 
you to express my strong conviction of the mistake, it will be, if the 
publication of our discoveries is delayed. Hear me, as an old political 
agitator, and the daughter of an old political agitator. In some ways my 
experience is far less than yours in your blessed Salvation work, but I 
have been taught something of political agitation. 

‘TI never believed that you could have got the age of protection raised 
this session by a “‘ fluke,’’ as it were. God sees further than we do. While 
you (we) were thinking of moving London in order to obtain our good 
end, He has, I think, a wider purpose, i.e. to move our whole country. 
Remember London is but a small part of England, and no great reform 
on any moral question was ever carried by London alone—never. The 
backbone of our country is in the provinces. . . . Now in order to arouse 
these, and above all to move the new Electors, the country people, you 
want time, and you have not got a bit too much time before the General 
Election comes on. If you put off other questions on which the new 
constituencies are already being [?] will beat you out of the field. I do 
believe God means us to make our appeal to the conscience of all England 
(still the land of the Bible), and now is the very time to doit. ... 

‘See what an opportunity missed it will be if you let this General 
Election pass without having roused the people over the country in a 
way which London people alone cannot be roused ; and what an influence 
on the character of the new Parliament you will have. I do pray you and 
Mr. Stead to look at the matter in this light, and also please let me tell 
you this that there is no time to lose, for it takes longer than you may © 
suppose to set the wave moving in the provinces. .. . 


‘Ever yours affectionately, 
wi) og eee ed ee 


THE MINOTAUR 123 


provided her with money, so that she could pay the brothel- 
keeper suitably, and at the same time express a certain 
fastidiousness with regard to callers. Although she had 
some unpleasant experiences, she came through unharmed. 
We planned also that Stead should visit her in the house, 
and there she told him the awful story of what she had 
witnessed concerning girls of thirteen or thereabouts. 

Other people also were set upon the task of investigation, 
including a detective, a clever fellow, the Greek already 
mentioned. In the result we found a great deal more 
immorality in London than we had ever supposed to exist, 
a great many more houses of ill fame than even the police 
had known about ; but, shocking and sorrowful as all this 
was, it concerned men and women, and was more or less 
open and acknowledged. The further thing which we 
found, and the discovery of which determined our subse- 
quent action, was that running through all this brazen 
organization of vice, was, as Mrs. Booth had affirmed, a 
deeper and darker vein of more cruel and appalling wicked- 
ness—nothing less than a traffic in children who were lured 
to a physical and moral doom. It was not the immorality 
that stung us so much, horrible as it was; it was the 
deliberate scheming and planning whereby mere children 
were bought and sold as irrevocably as in a slave market. 

The ‘ Pall Mall Gazette’ ‘ Extra’ of July 6, 1885, in 
which Stead described ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern 
Babylon,’ took the British public by storm in a way that 
can hardly be paralleled in newspaper history. I remem- 
ber that I was out of London on the afternoon that the 
first article, which I had already seen in proof, appeared, 
and, returning in the evening, I found that the only copies 
of the ‘ Pall Mall Gazette’ to be obtained were being 
sold by boys in Ludgate Circus for half-a-crown a sheet. 
The sensation was all the more tremendous because the 
‘Pall Mall Gazette’ had a high reputation for exactitude. 
It was a paper of tone and privilege, much patronized 
by clubmen. The hot waves of public feeling quickly 
swelled and lapped up to the doors of the House of 
Commons. 


124 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


On the very day of the publication of the first of the 
articles, Lord Salisbury’s new Ministry had met Parliament. 
Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, in his programme for the remainder 
of the session, had made no reference to the Criminal Law 
Amendment Bill, which had been left in the air—and, 
being House of Commons air, none too healthy a medium 
in which to be suspended. Nor did the ex-Ministers opposite 
protest against the omission. But a day or two later, 
evidently prompted by the state of feeling outside, the 
Home Secretary, Sir Richard Cross, proposed to resume 
the interrupted debate, on a promise of co-operation from 
Sir William Harcourt. Stead and I and one or two propa- 
gandists were called in to suggest how the measure could be 
strengthened. The Bill was a week in Committee in the 
House of Commons, and it passed into law early in August. 
The age of consent was put even higher than the fifteen 
years on which the Lords had insisted. On the motion 
of the Home Secretary himself, by 179 votes to 71, it was 
raised to sixteen. Never has there been a more immediate 
capitulation to the Fourth Estate. But the Fourth Estate in 
this case had behind it a British public stirred to the depths. 

So far so good. The battle was won! We had suffered 
in the fray and we were still to suffer, but nothing could 
undo the result of the campaign. Wounded we were. I say 
nothing here of myself, but the following by Mrs. Josephine 
Butler may give some idea of the extent to which Stead 
had passed through the furnace: 

Mr. Stead is publicly known only as a brave and enterprising 
reformer. But tomy mind the memory is ever present of a dark night 
in which I entered his office, after a day of hand-to-hand wrestling 
with the powers of Hell. We stumbled up the narrow dark stairs ; 
the lights were out, not a soul was there, it was midnight. I scarcely 
recognized the haggard face before me as that of Mr. Stead. He 
threw himself across his desk with a cry like that of a bereaved or 
outraged mother, rather than that of an indignant man, and sobbed 
out the words, ‘Oh, Mrs. Butler, let me weep, let me weep or my 
heart will break.’ He then told me in broken sentences of the little 
tender girls he had seen that day sold in the fashionable West-end 
brothels, whom he (father-like) had taken on his knee, and to whom 
he had spoken of his own little girls. Well might he cry, ‘ Oh, let 
me weep!’ 


ove 
THE OLD BAILEY 


THE events—and the success—I have here narrated 
will raise the query, ‘Why the Old Bailey? Why three 
months’ imprisonment for the chivalrous man who had 
laid bare the infamy, and in doing so had risked his reputa- 
tion and even his life? Why imprisonment, or at least the 
strain and odium of public trial, for his associates?’ 
Strange indeed it was that in the first case of any public 
interest under the new Criminal Law Amendment Act the 
‘criminals’ in the dock should be, not the monsters who 
had battened on the villainy, but the men and women who 
had helped to expose it! To explain that strange twisting 
of causes and circumstances, I must retrace my steps a 
little, and go back to the secret inquiry which led to the 
publication of the ‘ Maiden Tribute.’ 

It was one thing for Stead and the rest of us to satisfy 
ourselves of the truth of the position; it was another 
thing to gain public credence for what we knew. It was 
not enough to put forward the general results of our obser- 
vations ; we must have concrete cases proved or capable 
beyond all doubt of being proved. Before venturing on 
publication, therefore, Stead suggested that certain experi- 
ments be made. He got an old procuress to “‘ sell’ him two 
girls, both under sixteen, for each of whom he paid fio. 
The girls were produced at the appointed house, and Stead 
had a talk with each of them with the object of discovering 
how far they were aware of the nature of the transaction. 
It was evident, particularly so in the case of one of them, 
that they had only the vaguest notion of any possible 
impropriety. Stead’s blunt talk thoroughly frightened them, 
however, and, giving each of them £5, he sent them away. 


125 


126 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


Other experiments of various kinds were made, equally 
confirmatory of what we had heard. 

But even such stories were not definite enough for the 
purpose. They would have to be taken only on the word 
of Stead and those co-operating with him. We then decided 
that the only other thing to do was to make an experiment 
with an actual case, and to carry it through in such a way 
that we could call evidence from people of repute with regard 
to what had happened. We thought out the plan most care- 
fully, and it was put into execution on the Derby day of 1885. 

The plan was this: that Rebecca Jarrett, who, being 
an ex-brothel-keeper, understood the business, should go to 
some woman she knew would part with her child. The 
child should be taken to a professional procuress (Madame 
Mourez), who would certify it to be a virgo intacta, this 
being one of the abominations essential to such trans- 
actions. Then it was arranged that the child should be 
conveyed to a well-known house where Stead had engaged 
a room, and that there he should be left alone with her 
for an hour or so. It was important, further, to have it 
certified after this experience, that nothing had happened 
to the child, and accordingly it was agreed that she should 
be taken from the brothel by one of our trusted women, 
who was a great factor in these investigations, and was 
known throughout as Mrs. X,} straight to the house of a 
specialist whose name I had suggested, and who had most 
warmly agreed to help us, and that the specialist, after 
examining her, should furnish a certificate. 

All this was done to plan, and the next morning at 
Charing Cross Station I received the child from Jarrett, 
and Mrs. Combe conveyed her to Paris. Thus the case was 
proved up to the hilt, for although this particular girl had 
received no whit of harm, it was shown to be possible for a 
procuress to buy a child for money, to certificate her, bring 
her to a house of ill fame, leave her with a man she had 
never seen before, and then send her off to the Continent 
so that nothing further need be known of her. 


1 Mrs. X. was Mrs. Major Reynolds, one of the most devoted of the 
splendid band of women then working under Mrs. Booth. 


THE OLD BAILEY 127 


The moment this was done, Stead felt that his case was 
complete. He already had his information; he simply 
wanted to clinch it. The exposures in the ‘ Pall Mall 
Gazette’ soon followed. 

It would have been wonderful in such an enterprise if 
there had been no mistakes or miscalculations. The mis- 
takes never made me regret in the least the plan that we 
pursued. The need was desperate, and was met by desperate 
measures, which usually mean risk. 

The little circumstance which led us eventually to the 
dock was the (quite unnecessary) publication by Stead of a 
letter which the girl had written from France to her mother, 
and which, of course, had been intercepted. He published 
it with the object of showing the innocence of the child 
who had been sold for money. In this letter she had quoted 
a childish rhyme, which her mother recalled that she knew, 
and at once said, ‘ That’s my Eliza’ (the child had been 
called by another name in the revelations). 

Forthwith, in the character of the injured parent, she 
went to a great enemy of ours who did not like the pro- 
minence which The Salvation Army had obtained through 
the affair. Another story was also set before the editor of 
a Sunday newspaper, also no friend to The Army. The 
‘crime’ stood revealed! The girl had been abducted ! 
We, the protagonists of repressive legislation, had broken 
our own law! An evening rival of the ‘ Pall Mall ’—now 
defunct—took the case up. Information was laid on which 
a charge could be preferred. We were summoned under 
our own Act, which, of course, provided for much heavier 
sentences than had been possible under-the old law! We, 
a gang of subterranean engineers, were hoist with our own 
petard ! 

The circumstances of the trial at the Old Bailey need 
not be gone into at any length. Stead and I and the others 
were summoned in the first instance to appear at Bow 
Street, and a warrant was issued for the arrest of Rebecca 
Jarrett ; I had refused to disclose her whereabouts, fearing, 
as I did, that, her case being on a somewhat different plane 
from ours, she might be refused bail. We resolved that we 


128 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


would not have her arrested until the trial, when we hoped 
to be able to get bail for her along with ourselves, and so 
it turned out. 

Every blackguard in London must have assembled in 
Bow Street while the case was before the magistrate. From 
every foul den in the metropolis the people had come to 
gloat on the discomfiture of these modern Galahads. I 
was mobbed more than once, dragged out of a cab, and 
maltreated, and only rescued with difficulty by a police 
inspector, who drove the crowd right and left. On more 
than one occasion the police placed a ‘ Black Maria’ at 
our disposal, and we were rapidly conveyed from the Court 
to some distant Square, where cabs could be available for 
us. And, apart from the mob who shook our heads, there 
were the righteous and respectable people who shook their 
own. They were agreed as to the evil, were, in fact, horrified 
that such things could be in their midst, but, with here and 
there an exception, they strongly disapproved our methods 
of meeting it. It was impossible to disapprove of theirs, 
because they gave no hint of having any. 

And so to the Old Bailey. Here the feeling inside and 
outside the Court was intense. At times during the hearing 
the Court was very subdued, the common hush almost 
suggesting a religious solemnity ; at other times there was 
outburst and clamour. The public excitement could not 
be kept away from the precincts of the law. I am bound 
to say that on the whole we were personally treated with 
consideration. The robing room was given up to us, and 
we lunched together. Everything that could be unpleasant 
was dispensed with, except the necessary formality of 
locking us up for a few minutes in the cells each morning 
before we entered the dock. I had the ‘ condemned’ cell, 
by the way, not, I am sure, because of its associations, but 
because it happened to be the most commodious in the old 
Old Bailey. The warders were very civil, the police quite 
nice, and all the time we were sustained by a current of 
friendliness, if not of sympathy, even on the part of some 
who were against us. 

Mr. Justice Lopes, who behaved with great civility to 


THE OLD BAILEY 129 


me personally, was against us from the beginning. His 
view was evidently that we were all guilty. He showed 
himself particularly hostile at first, but weakened consider- 
ably, and it was at his suggestion that Mrs. Combe was 
released, long before the hearing concluded. All parties 
agreed that there was no evidence against her; meaning, 
of course, that they had not been able to secure any evidence. 

Rebecca Jarrett broke down under cross-examination. 
She had kept a house of ill fame, and certain things were 
brought forward relating to her past which she had not the 
courage to admit. It was a cruel ordeal for her, and I 
repented while I sat in the dock listening to her in the 
witness-box that I had allowed her to embark on such an 
adventure. Yet I amsatisfied that the evidence we obtained 
through her was an essential link in the chain, and that 
without it we should never have enforced the need for raising 
the age. 

My own feelings during the summing-up are set down in 
a letter written to my mother from the dock; from which 
I make an extract: 

As to the case, I have no regrets as to what I did. The mistakes 
and accidents all through have only been such as are usually attached 
to all human enterprises. I regret them, but I could not prevent 
them, glad as I would have been to do so. It is painful to have all 
regard for motive shut out of what they think it well to shut it out 
from, and yet to imply all sorts of bad motives in connexion with 
the smallest incidents of the affair. But I do beg you not to be 
distressed in any way about me personally. God will take care of 
me ! 

Then another thing. I do hope that no efforts will be made on 


my behalf, if we go to prison, that are not made on behalf of Stead. 
Do please let me beg this of you... . 


The jury showed a very intelligent mastery of the 
problem. Although we were told over and over again as 
the trial proceeded that motive had nothing to do with the 
law, and that the simple question was whether or not we 
had abducted the girl, we could see day by day that the 
jury were coming more and more to the conviction that 
motive must be allowed for. They were almost bound to 
find Stead guilty because of his own admissions, technical 

K 


130 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


though they were, yet such was their evident hesitation in 
doing so, and such the volume of public sentiment outside, 
that Mr. Justice Lopes gave what was a comparatively 
light sentence—three months—which the Home Secretary 
promptly ordered should be in the first division. Still, it 
was a conviction, and my satisfaction in my own acquittal 
was overshadowed by it. 

The feature of the whole trial, in my opinion, was 
Charles Russell’s speech for Jarrett. It was one of his most 
wonderful efforts. He spoke for two hours, and when he 
sat down, my dear wife sent up a note to me in the dock 
saying that she did not care how the case ended after that 
speech! ‘It is worth it all.’ Although Rebecca Jarrett in 
her evidence had produced an unfavourable impression, yet 
when Russell finished speaking for her there was not a dry 
eye in the Court. Even the Judge and the Clerk of Arraigns 
were moved by the appeal which he made on her behalf. 
When the Attorney-General came to reply, he dealt with 
Rebecca very cautiously. 

During his cross-examination, Sir Richard Webster 
showed some tendency to bully. One of his favourite 
methods in cross-examining was to repeat the question, 
“Do I understand you to say ...?’ At last I said to 
him in reply to one such repetition, ‘Sir Richard, I have 
told you once. Why do you ask me again?’ From that 
point his manner greatly improved. One small circum- 
stance which I recall with regard to Webster was our dis- 
covery of a bundle of letters on the table of the apartment 
assigned to our use, which Webster had evidently mislaid. 
I took them up and read one or two, thinking they were 
ours, but finding that they belonged to the prosecuting 
counsel, sent them to him. I gathered enough of their 
contents to know that they were letters from his con- 
stituents—he had just been elected for Launceston—hotly 
criticizing him for appearing against The Salvation Army ! 

The best speech after Russell’s was Waddy’s for me. 
Both Russell and Waddy saw our position from the begin- 
ning, but certain of our legal friends misunderstood it in 
some respects. At one of the conferences in the Temple, 


THE OLD BAILEY 131 


at which nearly all the counsel—a formidable array— 
engaged in the defence were present, Stead expressed our 
unwillingness to take a certain line which, though it might 
be useful for the defence, was not, in his opinion, entirely 
candid. Thereupon Henry Matthews, in the presence of us 
all, burst out with the exclamation, ‘ Oh, Russell, I cannot 
stand these people’s thirst for being martyrs!’ Stead 
replied like lightning, “ No! you will never be one.’ It was 
the idea of some of these gentlemen in wigs that the whole 
thing was a flare, either to win renown for The Salvation 
Army, or to make the fortune of a newspaper. 

The uses of the trial? Of course, we had already 
obtained the Act, and we counted nothing else of very much 
moment. But the trial did The Army a great deal of good. 
It made us known, and put us at one stroke in the very front 
rank of those who were contending for the better treat- 
ment of the lost and the poor; and while it roused some 
powerful enemies, especially in the Press, the enmity lasted 
only for a time, while the sympathy which was generated 
remained and remains a permanent possession. Our work 
for women was greatly furthered by these strange circum- 
stances. We gained friends in political circles, won recog- 
nition from the Government then existing and from its 
successors, and were brought into touch with Queen Victoria 
and with some of her Court who ever since have been inter- 
ested in what we have been doing. We knew from the 
Dowager Marchioness of Ely and others that the Queen 
followed the proceedings with great concern and sympathy. 
The case opened doors for us also in the oversea Dominions, 
and in the United States, and the sympathy materialized in 
financial help, which, if not at the time large in amount, was 
encouraging in character. 

A word may be said on subsequent happenings as they 
concern one or two of the persons who figured in these pro- 
ceedings. One strange circumstance was the discovery, ten 
years later, that Eliza Armstrong was the illegitimate 
daughter of the woman who had posed as the injured mother. 
Had this been known at the time it is very improbable that 
we should have been prosecuted at all. The Salvation Army 


132 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


has since assisted Eliza more or less. The mention of Rebecca 
Jarrett shall close this episode. It is pleasant to record that 
she has done well. Her subsequent life has amply proved 
the sincerity of her repentance. She is still with The Army, 
enjoying a happy old age, free from the bondage of the past, 
and trying to serve God in the sphere in which He has in 
His mercy placed her. 


XVI 
GLIMPSES OF STATESMEN 


ONE of the early champions of The Salvation Army among 
British statesmen was John Bright. He it was who wrote 
to us, at a time when we were harassed by unruly mobs and 
law-breaking magistrates, ‘I suspect that your good work 
will not suffer materially from the ill treatment you are 
meeting with. The people who mob you would, doubtless, 
have mobbed the Apostles.’ 

For a long period Bright had rooms in Piccadilly, over 
a shop, where he stayed during the Parliamentary week, 
going home into the country for the week-end. It was a 
dismal place, musty and dusty. At the time I saw him the 
Home Rule agitation was beginning to rend the Liberal 
Party. Bright was angry with Gladstone for having sent 
up his ‘ kite’ without notice to his colleagues. ‘ Why didn’t 
he ask us?’ he kept on saying. I can see him now in the 
shadows of that room, his deep voice repeating the question. 
He seemed even more annoyed at the neglect of Gladstone 
to inform his colleagues than at his change of attitude on the 
Irish question. 

We talked of W. T. Stead. Of some of Stead’s views 
Bright had a great horror. He spoke with indignation of 
Stead’s former agitation for increasing the fleet. I suggested 
that if he had a fine mansion, filled with precious things, he 
might not think it very wicked, with burglars about, to keep 
a good-sized bulldog in the garden. He laughed so that the 
teacup shook in his hand. 

‘Well,’ he said at parting, ‘tell your friend Stead I 
will let him have the dog, but he must keep him on the 
chain.’ 

It struck me—was I wrong ?—that his objection to the 


133 


134 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


fleet and, indeed, to armaments in general, was more to the 
appearance than to the reality. He did not think it so very 
wicked to have anavy. What he objected to was having 
it too much in evidence ! | 

With Bright, as with every really great man, there was 
a total absence of ‘ side.’ Before I had been in his room for 
five minutes he had made me as much at home as if I had had 
his acquaintance for years. In some ways he was really a 
most charming man, and in appearance one of the most 
noble. Although, as in the case of Gladstone, at first sight 
his shortness of stature was disappointing, he had the most 
beautiful face and hands, and a head in ten thousand. 

For all his Liberalism—shall I say Radicalism ?—there 
was a strain of real Conservatism in Bright. He had a 
mind capable of certain important distinctions. I believe 
he was able to perceive, and did perceive, ‘ that while perse- 
cution is always bad, intolerance of vice, and of the opinions 
that promote vice, is the life-blood of a healthy society ; 
that what is called broadmindedness is often just no more 
than not knowing what you think yourself, and not caring 
what other people think.’ 

Lord Salisbury impressed me in a different way. Like 
Bright’s, his head was magnificent, though his features, if 
there be anything in physiognomy, were scarcely those of a 
strong character. His figure was an imposing one. A feature 
of it—especially in his later years—was a marked stoop, 
which at times seemed to be a defect, but which at other 
times appeared, curiously enough, as a not unfitting accen- 
tuation of the weight and burliness of the man. His head 
appeared to be too heavy for his frame. It was said of him, 
possibly with some truth, that in diplomacy he was ‘a 
lath painted to look like iron.’ There was something about 
his appearance which gave an idea of tremendous force, 
combined with a curious frailty. In some respects I 
regarded Lord Salisbury as an ideal diplomatist, as diplo- 
matists go, though I was quite alive to his mistakes. I was 
first interested in him because of the fine part he played, then 
as Lord Robert Cecil, in the Schleswig-Holstein affair, in 
1866. That, of course, was before my time of intelligent 


GLIMPSES OF STATESMEN 135 


comprehension of world affairs, but in after years I read his 
published speeches, and in my early visits to Denmark I 
attained a somewhat intimate knowledge of the heartbreak 
caused by the British failure in that matter. I never 
sympathized, however, with the clamour of those who 
abused Lord Salisbury’s line of action in Berlin after the 
Turco-Russian War, miserable as the consequences have 
turned out to be for the world. I am confident that he 
really fought for what he believed to be right, and that the 
result might have been a far happier one for Europe if he 
had been alone there instead of being an understudy to 
Disraeli. 

Hatfield is on the same railway line as my own station, 
and sometimes I saw Lord Salisbury on his journeys to and 
from town. On occasion, without noticing that he was 
already occupying the carriage, I got into the same compart- 
ment, to find him alone. Several times I noticed that he 
was reading the New Testament; once or twice it may 
have been the Book of Common Prayer. Now and again 
we had a brief conversation on these little journeys. One 
occasion I remember particularly. He was seeking to 
encourage me about the work of The Army, and he advised 
me not to take too much notice of the attacks which were 
constantly being made upon us. I cannot recall whether 
he said he had made the remark in a speech he had just 
delivered, or that he was intending to make it, but he said, 
‘I give vou the counsel which I give to my own friends, 
“Never say anything for me unless you say something 
against me.”’’ That idea, that unmixed praise may be a 
serious evil, and that a moiety of abuse may be a positive 
good, has often thrown a little ray of light upon the way. 

Mr. Asquith, whose title, the Earl of Oxford, is not yet 
familiar to the public ear, I came to know owing to his 
being retained for us in various law proceedings. Of his 
skill as a lawyer I have something to say in another chapter. 
Later on we consulted him in matters concerning develop- 
ments in our constitutional arrangements. From the first 
I felt a kind of surprised admiration for his ability, about 
which, indeed, no man with half an eye could be mistaken. 


136 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


His is the kind of genius which I hold most in respect—the 
ability to take trouble, plus the will to take 1t. 

In my opinion Mr. Asquith has always suffered from 
two great disadvantages. He came late in life to Parliament 
and office, and this, coupled perhaps with his legal training, 
in a great measure accounts for that inflexibility of manner 
and that compartmental habit of thinking noted by so many 
students of his personality. They are the signs of the 
mechanical habit of mind, although of the mechanical 
raised to the level of genius. It is a Jove who wields the 
hammer, but the strokes are too precise. One must recog- 
nize, however, that it was probably this very characteristic 
which helped to make him a master of lucid and precise 
statement. His other defect, to which I have referred, is 
the absence of what has been called the ‘ emotion ideal.’ 
But I should like to say that I believe the Earl of Oxford 
to be a man of true principle. If he is not possessed of any 
great moral passion or crusading ardour, he is a true hater 
of compromises and shams, he detests dodgery, in politics 
or elsewhere, and he is a man who sees clearly what he 
sees and acts with concentrated energy. If he had seen 
that spiritual truth is not dependent on history, and if only 
he had had the dominating motive of religious conviction and 
experience—especially experience—he could easily have 
taken as commanding a place in his own time as Gladstone 
took in his—perhaps even more commanding. 

With Gladstone I never came into personal contact. 
My father had one interview with him at Hawarden, and 
Gladstone greatly impressed him as a sincere and spiritually 
minded man, and the Founder was a good judge! A letter 
from Gladstone followed the interview, in which, referring 
to some notes which the Founder had sent him, he said 
that they helped him ‘ to look out upon the wide world and 
reflect with reverence upon the singular diversity of the 
instruments which are in operation for recovering mankind, 
according to the sense of those who use them, from their 
condition of sin and misery ; and encourages hearty good- 
will towards all that, under whatever name, is done with 


1 The Life of William Booth, by Harold Begbie. (Vol. ii, pp. 213-18.) 


GLIMPSES OF STATESMEN 137 


a genuine purpose to promote the work of God in the 
world.’ 

Both men made a deep impression on the other. Writing 
shortly afterwards of the matter my father said : 


It may be asked what were the general impressions made upon 
me by my conversation with this remarkable man ? No matter how 
widely divergent opinions may be respecting Mr. Gladstone’s political 
views and legislative action, there is no room for opposing estimates 
of his intellectual powers, his oratorical gifts, the lofty positions he 
has filled in the Councils of his country, or the vast influence he has 
wielded in the world. No one could be with him, and hear him talk 
in the unconventional manner I had the opportunity of doing, 
without receiving some definite and lasting impressions respecting 
him. In my case, what were they ? At least, what were some of 
them ? 

The first thing that struck me was his earnestness—you might 
term it his unaffected earnestness. He put his heart into my business, 
and that right away, going straight to the very vitals of the subject 
as phase after phase of it passed before him. 

I was also much impressed by the genzality which made me feel 
at home all in a moment. Then at every point I could not help 
feeling that I was in contact with a lofty soul, controlled by motives 
of generous kindliness, who was pleased to learn something of what 
seemed like a wonderful work of God. 

I was also impressed by the disinterestedness with which he pur- 
sued his inquiries, as well as with the choice and beautiful and 
expressive words which he evidently had at perfect command. 
There was no hesitation. The phrases wanted to express the exact 
shade of meaning he desired came at will and that, I thought, in 
tones most grateful to the ear. I had heard it said before the inter- 
view that he was a great talker. After the interview it is my opinion 
that he ought to talk. Itis a luxury to listen to him. It is ashame 
for him to be silent. It surely is the message, and not the age of a 
speaker, which is the vital matter. 

My Salvationist friends will ask me how far I was impressed with 
Mr. Gladstone’s religious realizations ? I shall answer, that I had 
not much opportunity for judging; but I may say that not only 
was the whole tenor of that conversation favourable to such a 
conclusion, but that there were passages in that interchange of 
thoughts, views, and feelings that produced on my mind very 
forcibly the impression that, among the many things carefully con- 
sidered and experimentally known to W. E. Gladstone were the 
governing influences of the Holy Spirit and the saving Grace of God. 


I saw Gladstone in the House once or twice and heard 


138 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


him make a short speech. Some time after—during the 
period I think of his second administration—I was walking 
down Regent Street one afternoon when I recognized the 
Prime Minister on the other side of the street. No one who 
knew him at all could mistake him. The vivacity which 
belonged to his speaking and action showed itself in his very 
gait, and he conveyed something of himself in the varying 
changes of his facial expression. On this occasion he was 
accompanied by a young woman, and I, probably quickened 
in my perceptions as a result of Salvation Army experience, 
instantly saw that she was one of a sorrowful class. Mr. 
Gladstone was evidently speaking to her in the most kindly 
and fatherly manner. I did not of course hear what he said, 
but there was something about his whole attitude, and about 
the girl’s appearance also, which led me to feel that he was 
appealing to her and bestowing some kind of favour upon 
her. 

I did not then know what I afterwards found to be the 
case, that both he and Mrs. Gladstone concerned themselves 
for many years in work for those unhappy women, but it 
was certainly a curious thing that I, already much interested 
in Rescue Work and at that time feeling the admiration 
which many young men felt for the Grand Old Man, should 
have had a glimpse of him under such circumstances. 

Perhaps my distant picture of Gladstone as a man 
worthy of all homage was coloured by my firm belief in 
his deep personal religion. The contrast with his great 
antagonist, Disraeli, no doubt heightened the effect in 
Gladstone’s favour; and it was still further added to by 
some illuminating flashes upon the home-life both of him- 
self and of Mrs. Gladstone. These were forthcoming from 
an old servant of the family, who through his own fault 
had fallen on evil days, and who at the request of the 
Gladstones was taken in hand and helped by us. 

When, later on, I came to read Morley’s ‘ Life,’ I was 
glad to find so much that tended to confirm my former 
estimate. Few passages in any literature that I know of 
more finely express the fundamentals of the personal faith 
and practice of spiritual religion than some words of 


GLIMPSES OF STATESMEN 139 


Gladstone’s, which I see I have underscored in my copy of 
that book? : 


In the Christian mood, which ought never to be intermitted, 
the sense of this conviction—[In His will is our peace|—should 
recur spontaneously ; it should be the foundation of all mental 
thoughts and acts, and the measure to which the whole experience 
of life, inward and outward, is referred. The final state which we 
are to contemplate with hope, and to seek by discipline, is that in 
which our will shall be one with the will of God; not merely shall 
submit to it, not merely shall follow after it, but shall live and move 
with it, even as the pulse of the blood in the extremities acts with 
the central movement of the heart... . 

Resignation is too often conceived to be merely a submission, 
not unattended with complaint; to what we have no power to 
avoid. But it is less than the whole of the work ef a Christian. 
Your full triumph is... that you would not if you could alter 
what in any matter God has plainly willed... . 

Here is the great work of religion; here is the path through 
which sanctity is attained, the highest sanctity ; and yet it is a path 
evidently to be traced in the course of our daily duties. 


It has been said that Gladstone was a disciple, almost a 
creation, in fact, of Bishop Butler. Lamnotsure. [donot 
think we can easily overstate the greatness of Bishop Butler’s 
conception of the truth or the unflinching sincerity with 
which he states it. He was one of the greatest teachers and 
one of the most earnest characters in the history of our faith, 
at any rate in England. Dean Church has a valuable com- 
ment on one aspect of Butler which I quote’: 


Pitt is reported to have said of the ‘ Analogy’ that it was a 
book which opened as many questions and raised as many doubts 
as it solved. Of course it does. No one can expect to sound the 
“great deeps’ of God’s government, without meeting difficulties 
which defy human understanding. This would be true of any dis- 
cussion going deeply and sincerely into a subject in which our only 
possible knowledge can be but ‘in part,’ seeing ‘ through a glass 
darkly.’ But Butler’s object is not to remove all doubts and diffi- 
culties, which, in such a matter as religion, with light and faculties 
like ours, is obviously impossible, but to put doubts and difficulties 
in their proper place and proportion to what we do see and know in 
a practical scheme of life and truth, and in a practical choice between 
God and the rejection of Him. 


1 Morley’s ‘ Life of Gladstone,’ Vol. i, Chapter vi, p. 216. 
2* Pascal and other Sermons.’ 


140 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


But I would rather speak of Gladstone as a disciple of 
Paul. I think that his fine intellect drank at that source. 
For Paul, history, revelation, reason, emotion, faith, ceased 
to be a huge aggregation of differing and sometimes con- 
tending forces the moment he saw them from the Cross of 
Christ. This was the great Apostle’s chief lesson to the ages. 
Gladstone had received and assimilated that lesson, and in 
his long life, cast in surroundings perhaps the least favourable 
to spiritual things, he really strove to apply it. 

I should like to add one word here about another view 
of Gladstone, described to me by the late Lord Armitstead, 
with whom I was rather intimate. Lord Armitstead always 
spoke of the sympathetic quality in his nature. He who saw 
Gladstone, not as a political leader but as a friend, saw the 
tenderness and considerateness that was hidden from the 
world by that stern old countenance and often remote and 
imperious manner. Lord Armitstead, who with Sir Donald 
Currie arranged little sea trips for their hero, said that when 
cn board ship with Gladstone it often happened that many 
other members of the company had not the smallest inclina- 
tion for devotions. But there was one who never missed the 
short daily service, who faithfully took his place whether any 
others joined him or not. It was the Grand Old Man. 


XVII 
W. T. STEAD AND CECIL RHODES 


SOME of my recollections of W. T, Stead are told in the 
chapters which deal with the passing of the Criminal Law © 
Amendment Act (1885) and with his appearance, with 
myself and others, in the dock at the Old Bailey. 

I always think that Stead’s three months’ imprisonment 
did him harm. It tended to increase his insularity. When 
he came out of prison he had an immense following in the 
country, and if he had been disposed to adopt more 
ordinary methods of strengthening his influence he would 
no doubt have become a great power in the nation on the 
side of important reforms. But he preferred to plough a 
lonely furrow, if that is not too quiet a figure for the man’s 
fiery energy, and he avoided association with any existing 
groups or parties of organized opinion. He remained 
always, however, very friendly with The Army, and helped 
us in the Press. He had indeed always done that from the 
time of his first meeting with our people in Darlington, 
where he was editor of the ‘ Northern Echo,’ when he 
championed what was then our very unpopular cause. 
In his first letter to us he complained that our Officers in 
that town were overworked, and that it was not good 
generalship to let the soldiers kill themselves. The Founder 
replied that he would never make a general if he was afraid 
to sacrifice his men in order to win the battle! Later on, 
after he came to London, Stead used his influence with 
John (later Lord) Morley, then his chief on the ‘ Pall Mail 
Gazette, to make known and put down the disgraceful 
violence which assailed us in many parts of the country. 
Later still (1890) his pen did very much to help us in con- 
nexion with the ‘ Darkest England’ Scheme. He brought 


14! 


142 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


the valuable help of his journalistic skill to bear upon the 
task of editing some of the material which appeared between 
the covers of the Founder’s Book: ‘In Darkest England 
and the Way Out.’ 

At an early period of my acquaintance with Stead I 
learned to appreciate deeply his religious character. It was 
both strong and passionate. During the investigations 
which led to the ‘ Maiden Tribute’ we spent for periods of 
weeks half an hour to an hour in prayer together aaiy. The 
offices of the ‘ Pali Mall Gazette’ were then in Northumber- 
land Street, off the Strand, and Stead had rooms a stone’s 
throw away, where he used to take lunch and tea. Thither 
we would adjourn and pray. The facts which he discovered 
during those investigations had a great effect upon us both, 
but especially upon him. He used to come to my rooms at 
all hours during those summer nights. I have seen him on 
my Office floor sobbing, partly, no doubt, owing to the ex- 
treme tension and horror of the inquiry, but in a large 
measure also because of the human grief of his fervent spirit 
at the heartrending cruelty which stood disclosed. Some 
earnest prayer, a cup of coffee, and he was braced for further 
efforts. J was upheld, amid the whole ghastly business, by 
my conviction that the country could be roused on this 
subject. Stead did not realize, journalist though he was, 
what a sensation it would make, nor to what great purpose 
the facts, adequately presented, would stir the public soul. 

Stead always impressed me in that early association as a 
man intensely anxious to seek the guidance of God. The 
deepest passion which moved him was for the victory of a 
righteous cause. He was a journalist, but he always sub- 
ordinated his journalism to what he believed to be right. 
Religion with him was service. He set out, heart and soul, 
to serve his generation. The world was cleaner and sweeter 
for his eloquent voice. He aroused the nation on the 
social question. He carried through that battle to its end 
(which for him was Holloway Jail), not with a journalist’s 
keenness for a scoop?, but with the fierce zeal of a reformer 


1 Indeed, his crusade is said to have greatly injured the ‘ Pall Mall 
Gazette’ by the withdrawal of advertisements. 


W. T. STEAD AND CECIL RHODES 143 


intent on righting a great wrong. He was a Salvationist in 
mufti. J remember that when I was in the witness-box at 
the Old Bailey, answering, I hope, with some effectiveness 
the cross-examining counsel, Stead sent me a slip of paper 
on which he had written, ‘ Hallelujah! The Court feels like 
a Salvation Army prayer-meeting.’ That was the spirit in 
which the whole of that dreadful business was carried 
through. 

Although we were meeting daily and nightly, consider- 
able correspondence passed between us at this time. Some 
of Stead’s letters reveal something of the intense horror 
and anger we felt at the abominations unearthed. He 
writes on one occasion : 


Dear Bramwell, 


Hell, Damnation—and all the foul fiends. O man, it is a 
sore sight. To have a child of 14, beautiful and innocent as the day 
to be brought to you to be ruined—willingly—yes, for she wants 
money for her mother who is lying ill and in sore trouble. Poor 
thing, poor thing, it made my heart bleed. 10 for the price of her 
shame, selling it as she might for mother’s sake. 

She nerved herself up to it—poor child, but when I left the room 
she broke down in tears. 

‘Would you have half and not be seduced, or all and be seduced ? 
Half, oh, yes, half!’ 

And she shall have it. But Dr. Miller never turned up; so the 
examinations could not take place. Ask Mrs. Reynolds to call on 
me as soon as possible in the morning. I want her to go to the 
address the child gave me, to use it to take some nourishing food to 
her mother, and make inquiries, of course knowing nothing about 
this. 

O Bramwell, it is killing me—the Devil’s work. 

But courage! I must now hasten to the Café in 
Street, to eat a supper—infernal sacrament of the Devil—with one 
of the worst procuresses in London. 

Good Lord, help me. 

They also brought me a maiden, a healthy, motherless country 
lass just up to town—apprenticed to ; 

Oh, these she fiends! I was at the Lock hospital to-day. Good 
Matron—very ; hates C.D. Acts and doctors and police like the 
very Devil. 


And, Amen, and Amen. God help us all, 











144 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


Stead was a religious man. When I met him on his 
release from prison his first words were, ‘ I have had a great 
time. What the world wants is Christ!’ And during my 
last conversation with him, many years afterwards, not 
many weeks before he went down on the 7véanic—our talk 
turned on some of the disappointments he had found, and 
the burden on heart and spirit which they involved, and I 
shall not easily forget the way in which he suddenly held 
up his finger and exclaimed with deep teeling, ‘Ah! It isin 
God I trust. Only the living God can hold up a living soul.’! 

My dear mother was one of Stead’s heroines. During 
her last illness I remember him twice coming down to 
Clacton-on-Sea and kneeling by the side of her suffering bed 
and pouring out his soul to God. With the Founder of 
The Salvation Army he never got on quite so well. Both 
men were doughty blades, and at times they clashed a 
little. Even when Stead was at the zenith of his public 
influence the Founder had misgivings about his real strength. 
Himself the soul of simplicity and candour, the Founder did 
not like a certain artificiality which he thought there was 
about Stead’s exterior. And, on his side, Stead never quite 
accepted the Founder in the sense in which one man looks 
to another for leadership. He admired him, and foresaw 
something of the success of The Army when others doubted 
him, but there was some reserve between the two. I cannot 
resist telling a story of one of Stead’s last interviews at Head- 
quarters. Stead and the old General were alone, and evi- 
dently failed to reach complete agreement on some matter, 


i Stead suffered acutely at times from depression. In such moments 
the clouds obscured all the lights in his firmament. Towards the end of the 
Old Bailey trial already referred to he had one of these experiences. I 
find I wrote to him : 

‘Your reputation is at this very moment such as you never dreamed 
of. Your name is as well known as any living man’s—and known in 
connexion not with some old party cry and doctrine, but with the rising 
tide of a great new movement amongst the whole English-speaking popu- 
lation of the earth, in favour of right and purity and freedom. This Court, 
this Jury, cannot harm you in the end—the worst they can do is to make 
you a little harder fight. 

‘Don’t talk about offering yourself up, Gon, I tell you, is above all 
this chatter. I have more to fear than you from the Attorney and the 
Judge—you have a House-top from which to answer in the P.M.G.; and 
when all thety lies are forgotten God's truth will go marching on.’ 


W. T. STEAD AND CECIL RHODES 145 


Presently I thought it time to enter the room and apply the 
closure. After a few words I brought Stead out to my own 
adjoining room, while I remained for a moment behind with 
my father. My father, who was evidently a little exasper- 
ated, said to me vehemently, ‘ I cannot stand Stead!’ And 
as for Stead, when I returned to him, he remarked, with his 
delightful chuckle, ‘ You’ve got a pretty handful in there ! ’ 
indicating the next room ! 

Is this generation of short memories forgetting how 
great a national figure Stead was? He began his career by 
pressing the Eastern question into life. He was really the 
founder of the modern British navy ; nobody worked as he 
did to create public enthusiasm for the fleet. Lord Fisher, 
in his ‘Memories,’ describes Stead as the greatest of all 
journalists—‘ he was absolute integrity and feared no man.’ 
When Stead went down with the Titanic, Fisher wrote to 
Lord Esher saying that he could see him putting the 
women and children in the boats, ‘and probably singing 
a Hallelujah! and encouraging the ship’s band to play 
cheerfully.’ 

In the South African War Stead took a very pronounced 
line. He was in violent antagonism to the whole British 
policy. He would never believe that there was anything in 
the attitude of the Kruger party which was at all serious. 
All the anti-British, pro-Dutch or Africander business, with 
its projected United States of Africa, he dismissed as purely 
superficial. Perhaps—I am not sure—his views on the 
whole question were unconsciously coloured by his an- 
tagonism to the eminent British statesman most concerned 
in the rupture. 

Stead’s open expression of his convictions, on the Boer 
War and on other matters, must have meant a great renun- 
ciation for him, yet he never wavered. He had confidence 
in himself as an instrument of Providence, directed to give 
effect to some things in the will of God. Above everything 
else, he was a fighter. Perhaps it was this as much as 
anything which drew us to him. He loved fighting, and he 
understood it. He did not raise the welkin when he got a 
scratch, nor ask for decorations when he had won a skirmish ! 


L 


146 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


And in all his warfare he showed a marvellous generosity 
towards the other side. Usually such intense self-confidence 
as his goes with intolerance. In Stead we had a man who was 
convinced that his own sometimes very narrow way was the 
right one, and yet a man who could find something beauti- 
ful in his most deadly opponent. 

All the harder, therefore, is it to speak of the spoiling 
influence of his later career. It was the grief and disturbance 
occasioned by the death of a dearly loved son that finally 
sent him over into ‘ spookism’ with which he had toyed on 
and off for some years. He soon showed the same dogged 
tenacity which had characterized him in investigations more 
worthy of his powers. He made egregious blunders in his 
estimates of the different mediums, yet he held to his main 
theory that communication was possible, and that it would 
serve a good purpose. I took, of course, the directly contrary 
opinion, and hold it still. During the many years that I 
have been observing human life I have never known any 
one who has been in any way bettered by association with 
what we have come to call spiritualism ; and I have known 
many who have been worsened. I do not say this merely 
because I think that the great majority of spiritualists are 
deluded, and a considerable minority fraudulent; nor 
because of my belief that if any intercourse has really 
been achieved it must be with evil spirits. I say it because 
of what I have observed in the effects on character of those 
who have taken up spiritualism. 

My own conviction is that if there are ‘ familiar spirits,’ 
then they are evil spirits, and that these communications 
with the dead, assuming that there is anything in them at 
all, are due to personations by these evil spirits, who pretend 
to be the beloved departed. But I, too, am a spiritualist (for 
the word is too good a one to belong to necromancy), and the 
spiritualism which I believe in is that which manifests itself 
in the life of the individual, producing such wonderful 
changes and exaltations in human character as we con- 
tinually see in The Army. I believe in communications 
from above, expressed not in terms of cryptic or trivial 


messages, but in terms of personal purity and courage, and 


W. T. STEAD AND CECIL RHODES 147 


holiness and joy. Our spiritualism can marshal its converts 
by tens of thousands. They are men and women who have 
been brought up from utter selfishness into a new life of love 
and sanctity. By the side of this, what has been achieved 
by that other spiritualism to which poor Stead gave his 
adherence ? Where hus it ever taken us? How has it ever 
helped us ? | 

W. T. Stead is linked in my mind with Cecil Rhodes by 
an unfortunate circumstance. On one of his visits to 
England, Rhodes told me that he had made a settlement of 
his fortune which would benefit education, and that he had 
appointed Stead in an important relationship to his trustees. 
He said also, incidentally, that he had given Stead instruc- 
tions that he was to help The Salvation Army. This greatly 
interested both myself and the Founder, and we spoke to 
Stead about it. Stead observed a very proper reticence with 
regard to the intentions of Mr. Rhodes, but he confirmed 
generally what the latter had said, and told us that Rhodes 
had given him the direction, in addition to other instructions 
of a more formal nature, ‘ Booth is to be helped.’ 

Stead’s attitude on the Boer War, however, led to a 
division between the two men, and in the end Rhodes 
largely altered his will and excluded Stead from any part in 
the disposal of his estate. We, naturally, were greatly 
disappointed. But Stead never varied a hair’s breadth 
in his firm belief that the war was a crime against civiliza- 
tion. I dare say—I have no positive knowledge—that he 
would have benefited personally had he become Rhodes’s 
trustee, but I do not believe he ever felt a single regret for 
the course he took. 

I have never met any one, always excepting the old 
General, who made such an impression upon me as did Cecil 
Rhodes. In appearance alone he filled the picture. He was 
a mountain of a man, over six feet high, broad and deep- 
chested, and with the look of a Viking. One had a feeling 
that his enormous bulk was governed by a mind correspond- 
ingly large and powerful, and that his huge head and mas- 
sive brow betokened a tremendous will. His whole presence 
spoke of personal force, of faith in ideas, and of iron self- 


148 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


reliance. He was a man in whom temperament as distinct 
from character, and character as distinct from training, 
and training as distinct from either of the others, all com- 
bined to make a rare example of what a man could be. 
But what sombre tragedy he suggested, too! He was a 
man of profound melancholy. It enveloped him, and its 
folds extended out and covered you also. Here was indeed 
a great soul dwelling in the shadows. 

This depression was all the more remarkable because his 
life was full of faith—though not, indeed, the highest kind 
of faith—which is ever the reverse and antidote of depression. 
The moving force cf his career was his faith in Britain’s 
future. He believed in Britain as no man I have ever met 
believed in her. His patriotic faith took on almost a religious 
enthusiasm. He believed in the British character and civi- 
lization. His ambition was to make the British Empire 
the supreme force in the world, not merely politically, but 
morally, intellectually, spiritually. I think that The Army 
helped to give his ideas a more international range before 
he got them into their final shape. But there he was, prob- 
ably one of the most powerful, yet one of the most detached 
personalities that has ever loomed above the horizon to 
command the gaze of men. 

Apart from some casual intercourse, I met him only 
twice, but each occasion was memorable. The first was in 
1898, when he spent a day with us at our Land Colony for 
Men at Hadleigh. The second was when he came, quite 
unexpectedly, to one of our meetings in the (London) Mansion 
House. To deal with the second occasion first, we assembled 
as the custom is in the Lord Mayor’s parlour, before proceed- 
ing to the platform. Here I introduced Rhodes to several 
people, and presently took him aside and asked him if he 
would speak at the meeting. He declined. It occurred to 
me that he refused because he thought that if he spoke he 
would be expected to subscribe to The Army. Rhodes’s 
personal finance was always an amusement tous. The man 
who left six millions to education never seemed to have any 
cash in his pocket. I suggested to him plainly that he need 
not concern himself about giving us money. He replied with 


W. T. STEAD AND CECIL RHODES 149 


a laugh, ‘ I suppose you have heard that I have not got any.’ 
‘Well, not exactly that,’ I said, but before I could proceed 
further he broke into a loud guffaw and remarked, ‘ I hear 
your friend Stead has been saying that I am a millionaire 
without a sixpence.’ He paused to see the effect of this quip. 
I could not deny that I had heard something of the kind, 
and began rather awkwardly to explain. But he burst out 
laughing again, and clapping me on the shoulder, said, 
‘ My dear fellow, if you only knew how true it is!’ ‘ Well, 
all right,’ I said, ‘ but come and speak.’ Again he refused, 
and all I could get out of him on further request was, ‘ Well, 
I will see how you get on, and let you know.’ 

After the Lord Mayor, who presided, had spoken, I made 
my speech. As soon as I sat down Rhodes passed along his 
newspaper to me on the edge of which he had written, after 
a kindly word about my own address, ‘All right, I will say a 
few words if you wish it.’ Of course, I did wish it, and I 
had the pleasure of hearing him make a short but altogether 
capital speech in our support, to the great delight of the 
audience, and, incidentally, to the great astonishment of the 
Press. He had been most anxious previously to conceal 
himself, and had desired the Lord Mayor not to mention the 
fact that he was present. He finished his little speech by 
saying that he would give £200 for the particular fund we 
were met to promote. To those who did not know him it 
seemed a trifling gift, but to his familiars on the platform it 
was nothing less than a portent that The Salvation Army 
should have succeeded in getting money from Rhodes, who 
gave nothing to any cause save his great imperial projects. 
The speech was useful to us in other ways, and the next 
morning ‘The Times’ commented upon it in a leading 
article. 

But it was on that previous occasion, while visiting the 
Essex Colony, that I got the more intimate glimpse of the 
true man. He went down with us on the invitation of the 
Founder, whom he had met before in South Africa. Evi- 
dently he recognized in the Founder a kindred spirit. The 
picture of Rhodes which many people have is that of a 
silent, taciturn’ man, cold, stiff, and difficult to approach. 


150 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


They would have been surprised if they had looked through 
the windows of that railway carriage even before we were 
out of the station. We had not been sitting there five 
minutes before Rhodes and the Founder were talking as 
hard as they could go about the poor and the miserable of 
the world ; about South Africa and the native races ; about 
the prospects of our work in Rhodesia, and the chances of 
our getting help to do something for the peoples of the 
Zambezi. Upon many things they agreed; when they 
differed, they said so, and passed on. Rhodes seemed to 
enter fully into the Founder’s ideas as to the value of the 
people to the country before all else, and the importance of 
watching over their moral and spiritual as well as their 
material well-being. The subject of prayer being mentioned, 
Mr. Rhodes referred to an incident which occurred when 
they were in South Africa, and, turning to Lord Loch, who 
was the fourth of the company, said : 

‘The General has prayed for me.’ 

Lord Loch replied, ‘ Well, I cannot say that he has ever 
prayed for me.’ 

The General answered at once, in the most natural way, 
‘Then I will pray for you now’; and, kneeling down in 
the compartment, he asked God’s blessing on both his 
Puests. 

Rhodes did not kneel, in part because it was physically 
difficult for him to do so in that narrow space, but he bowed 
his head and closed his eyes, and when the General took his 
seat again Rhodes held out his hand to him in the midst of 
a silence which to me seemed eloquent of thoughts too deep 
for words. He was evidently greatly touched. 

The great South African was delighted with his day at 
Hadleigh, and said so. He went everywhere, saw every- 
thing, asked innumerable questions, interviewed Officers 
and colonists, tasted the soup, challenged the price of the 
coal, offered his advice on the value of fruit trees, and chaffed 
me unmercifully about an old portable engine which ought, 
no doubt, to have been disposed of long ago, but which 
our poverty had induced us to keep going. He was much 
impressed with some of the colonists, and on invitation 


W. I. STEAD AND CECIL RHODES I51 


spoke to a few of them, and showed his delight in the most 
unaffected way. He could not believe at first that these 
fine, brawny fellows had a history behind them such as 
we knew them to have. But he had seen something of the 
kind in South Africa. At Capetown, when one of our 
Commissioners met him, Rhodes asked a Local Officer of 
The Army who was also present about a discharged criminal 
in whom he had taken an interest, and who had been sent 
to us, in more or less despair, twelve months before. 

‘ He is doing well, sir,’ was the answer. ‘ He stayed with 
us for eight months, and he is now earning his own bread 
in regular employment.’ 

‘Do you mean to say that you have made that fellow 
work for twelve months ?’ asked Rhodes. 

meVes, Sir: 

‘Then,’ he said, ‘ that is the kind of miracle I believe 
At Hadleigh he also visited our little Hall. I shall never 
forget the expression on Rhodes’s face as he stood and looked 
down at the penitent-form. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I see. This 
is the dividing line between the old life and the new.’ It 
reminded me of a remark by Sir Walter Besant, when I was 
taking him round an exhibition we were holding at the 
Agricultural Hall. The exhibition included a model village 
Hall, in which regular Army Meetings were going forward 
continuously. Sir Walter looked in at one of the open 
windows, and seeing two or three kneeling at the penitent 
form, he said, in a tone of great earnestness, “ I am very glad 
to see you have the converting work going on here.’ 

Coming home in the train from Hadleigh, Rhodes and I 
were left alone. My father was in the next carriage, and 
Lord Loch had left us earlier in the day to attend the House 
of Lords. Struck by the depression and gloom which seemed 
to surround the man, and hopeful for him because of his 
evident interest in our work, I leaned across and said, 
‘Mr. Rhodes, are you a happy man?’ (A remark he had 
made at lunch about happiness gave me the opening.) I 
shall never forget how he threw himself back against the 
cushions of that first-class compartment, gripped the arm of 


in. 


152 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


the seat, and in this tense attitude looked at me with that 
extraordinary stare of his and exclaimed, ‘Happy? I— 
happy ? Good God, no!’ 

‘There is only one place, Mr. Rhodes,’ I said, ‘ where 
we can find real happiness, and that is down at the feet of 
the crucified Saviour, because it is only there we can be 
freed from our sins.’ 

‘Yes,’ he said, and then he added, ‘I would give all 
I possess to believe what that old man in the next carriage 
believes.’ 

As long as I live I shall never forget the tragedy—the 
utter tragedy—of his voice as he said, ‘Happy? I— 
happy ? Good God, no!’ Yet if a vote had been taken 
in the City of London, how many would have coveted what 
Rhodes had before anything else in the world? Here he 
was, unbosoming himself to one who was almost a stranger. 
‘Happy ? I—happy? Good God, no!’ Considering all 
the circumstances, and the personality of the man, I think 
that conversation was a very remarkable one. He pro- 
foundly moved me. 

When we were separating that night at Liverpool Street 
station Rhodes said to me, ‘Ah! You and the General are 
right ; you have the best of me, after all. I am trying to 
make new countries ; you are making new men.’ It wasa 
true thought, finely expressed. Rhodes’s eloquence came 
now and then, like the stones from his own reefs. He had 
no stream of eloquence at his command, but he could say, 
with apparent casualness, a memorable thing. He was 
dead within a year or two of that conversation, and even as 
I write I am reminded of his last words: ‘ So little done, 
so much to do.’ 

Nothing in the remarkable documents he left behind him 
seems to me more impressive than this testimony, which, 
save for the agnosticism of the opening phrase, might have 
been given on a Salvation Army platform : 

“If there be a God, and if He does care, then the most 
wmportant thing in the world for me 1s to find out what He 
wants me to do, and then to go and do 1.’ 


XVIII 
EARTHEN VESSELS 


I HAVE need to pull myself up in these desultory remini- 
scences lest they seem to treasure up the small coin of recol- 
lection of the wise men after the flesh and the mighty and 
the noble and leave out of the reckoning the sterling worth 
of that which, while often accounted weak and base, is 
really illustrious and great. The Army would be little or 
nothing had it not been for the great lowly ones. Our 
work has been the product, under God, of popular love and 
devotion and faith. It has been inspired largely from the 
ranks. It was the work of a dairy-maid in Melbourne which 
gave the original impulse to our labours among the lepers. 
It was a humble woman-comrade and her toiling husband 
in Lambeth who set us going at the Slum Posts. It was an 
East End compositor who was the means of originating 
The Army’s work for prisoners. It was a carpenter at 
Salisbury who formed our first Band. 

That is the solution of the puzzle which The Army 
presents of a multitude of various activities. Virile charac- 
ters have arisen, very often from the lowest social levels, to 
whom The Army has come to owe no small part of its direc- 
tion. They have often been rough and workworn hands 
which have started it upon fresh paths, pressed it forward 
over the painful miles of virgin territory. How can I pay 
an adequate tribute to those who have influenced us, who 
have prompted us to this or that or the other enterprise, 
or whose trust in us has been our perpetual encouragement : 
We could write another eleventh of Hebrews from the 
records of The Army and fill it with names which the world 
never knew, and of which the world was never worthy. 

Of several men in my earliest East End days I retain 


153 


154 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


a picture which the long years have not dimmed. There 
was Bamford, the evangelist, a powerful man physically, 
and a really earnest talker, with whom I had a measure of 
fellowship when quite a young lad, scarcely in my teens, in 
the Whitechapel Society. There was Thomas, a comrade of 
later years, a man not at all effective on the platform, but 
with a heart of gold, abounding in sympathy and love 
wherever sorrow and wickedness and poverty raised their 
heads. Together Thomas and I visited the poorest and 
lowest districts of the town in which we were working, 
Thomas putting on an apron and scrubbing the dirt off the 
floors, cleaning the grates, and lighting the bits of fires, 
watched over me while I proceeded to wash and tend the 
sick, cut the tangled hair of the old and helpless, and so 
forth. Between us we clothed the naked and fed the 
hungry, and sometimes performed the last reverent services 
for the dead, while we struggled to win the souls of the 
living. 

But it is of two men, each of them in his way an enthu- 
siast, that I want specially now to write. The first is dear 
old Cornish. I was about fourteen when I first knew him. 
I suffered at that time from very bad health, and was in an 
unsatisfactory and unsettled condition of mind, both as to 
my present and my future. Occasionally I attended the 
services of the Mission in Whitechapel, where my ill health 
made me exceedingly shy and reticent, and on this account, 
and also as the child of my parents, I was no doubt an 
object of interest to many people in the Mission circle. 
Some tried very disinterestedly to help me, little thinking 
that in later years we should stand side by side in the 
fighting of many a desperate battle. 

One remarkable spirit in the Mission who made a deep 
impression upon me and influenced in some ways my whole 
life was this converted drunkard who had been a wild and, 
I am afraid, a very cruel man. His wife had died, and when- 
ever he spoke of her it was in such terms as made one feel 
that he charged himself with the responsibility for her 
death. By business he was a costermonger, gaining a 
precarious livelihood by selling greenstuff out of a barrow 


EARTHEN VESSELS 185 


in the Whitechapel streets. I do not know how it was that 
he became specially interested in me, but he often spoke 
to me in the Aiter-Meetings, where he himself had great 
freedom in prayer. He urged me to take part also. 

One Sunday after the morning service he invited me to 
go home with him to his room and read to him. How well 
I remember it! I went there many times afterwards. 
Three flights of rickety stairs took one to a bare garret. In 
one corner were some strange cushions where he made his 
bed, and he had also a table, a couple of wooden chairs, 
and a large Bible, together with a kettle, a teapot, and a 
frying-pan. We began by praying together, and then I 
would read to him a little. He was only able to make out 
one or two chapters, which he did with the assistance of 
immense horn spectacles. Before long I found the most 
gracious and inspiring influence coming into my hfe through 
that one-time drunkard’s prayers, and my visits to him 
became a sort of institution. He would fry me a piece of 
bacon, and with that and some potatoes I often made a 
meal with him. It was a veritable sacrament. When we 
knelt down together and when he began to pray he was so 
uplifted that it often seemed to me that he was another 
man, a man with a heavenly mind and an angel tongue. 
And there came to me, in answer to those prayers—mingled 
with my own no doubt—a new feeling of relationship to the 
souls of men, a new directional impulse, impelling me to 
love and suffer for the sake of others. Again and again I 
have come down those old squeaking stairs feeling as though 
I walked on the wind, and have gone out on to Mile End 
Waste to speak and pray with sinners in altogether a new 
and self-forgetting fashion. 

Among the days of greatest progress I have known 
were those days in association with that strange old man, 
and in the presence of the divine influences which his simple 
and prayerful faith brought into my life. We were a peculiar 
couple: I, brought up in more or less refined and cultured 
surroundings, influenced by the teaching and example of 
some of the very noblest souls who had ever served God, 
and having some knowledge of the wider world ; he, a poor 


156 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


old drunkard, pulled out of the fire in the closing years of a 
ruined life, living on bacon and potatoes in a garret, unable 
to do much more than write his own name, and earning his 
bread by hawking cabbages in the purlieus of Spitalfields. 
Yet his influence on me was altogether in advance of the 
influence of any other human being who came across my 
path at that time, if perhaps I except my wonderful mother, 
and even with her the restraint and awkwardness of my 
growing youth made me for a time less responsive to her 
influence. Dear old Cornish, I shall find him in Heaven, 
and he will be one of those to whom I shall hope to express 
my gratitude for all that they have done for me ! 

It was after I first knew Cornish—I must have been 
about seventeen at the time—that we had in connexion 
with one of our Societies in the East End a man of very 
striking religious experience who suffered from the most 
awful lisp I have ever had the agony of listening to. He 
was a convert of the Mission, and had come one day to the 
mercy-seat in Whitechapel. I was delegated to speak to 
him. I found that he was seeking the power of God to 
witness for Christ, notwithstanding the ridicule which every 
effort of that kind brought upon him owing to this affliction. 
He was greatly helped by our prayer together, and from 
that day he did make his testimony in public hke the 
enthusiast he was, though I confess that I often wished 
he had remained silent because of the turbulent amusement 
which his remarks produced among the crowd! And he 
really seemed to hug those sibilant phrases which brought 
out his infirmity most conspicuously ! 

I became acquainted with him somewhat, and it was 
my great joy to find that wherever he went to lodge he got 
some of the people of the house—his landlords or land- 
ladies or their families—converted to God. He worked at 
that time in a drapery establishment in St. Paul’s Church- 
yard. One day I suggested to him that he should change his 
lodgings oftener because of this wonderful gift of his for 
securing the salvation of the people he lived with. And he 
did from that time frequently change his rooms. He also 
spoke often in the open air, his first efforts usually producing 


EARTHEN VESSELS 157 


such a howl of derision as would have discouraged any other 
speaker, but after a few minutes the people would quieten 
down, and he would go on with what he had to say in spite 
of his disability. I kept up my acquaintance with him for 
two or three years, and his courage and the results of his 
testimony deeply impressed me. One day I received word 
that he was dying in the London Hospital as the result, I 
think, of an accident. I went to see him, and we had a 
delightful time together. He thanked me tor my help in 
encouraging him to give his testimonies, and in bidding me 
good-bye with many assurances, he quoted—I have never 
forgotten it—that wonderful verse of Cowper’s hymn : 
Then in a nobler, thweeter thong, 
I'll thing Thy power to thave, 


When thith poor lithping th-tammering tongue 
Lieth thilent in the grave. 


Another random recollection of those early years in the 
East End comes back to me. Near my father’s house on 
the border of Victoria Park there was a little street of work- 
men’s houses, small, and built as closely together as possible, 
with the front doors opening flush with the pavement. 
They were akin to the poorest sort of ramshackle buildings 
of the period. In the course of my early work in the Mission 
I frequently visited in this street, especially the sick, which 
as a lad I was rather fond of doing. In one of these houses 
I came across the wife of one of our own people, belonging to 
our Society at Bethnal Green. The man was a foreman ina 
cardboard-box factory in the City. They had a numerous 
family, and the wife, who had lately given birth to another 
child, was very ill. It was soon evident that she was sick 
unto death, and to my great distress I found her exceedingly 
sad, overcast and gloomy, in face of the coming shadow. I 
visited her on several occasions, prayed with her, and tried 
to bring her into the light, but made little progress. Then 
one day, as I was going up the stairs to her room, I heard 
her rejoicing and praising God in the most pronounced 
manner. As soon as I reached her bedside I asked what 
had happened to bring about this wonderful change, and 
she told me, ‘O Mr. Bramwell, the Lord has come to me, 


158 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


and I have given them all up ’—she alluded to her children, 
whom she had been so concerned at leaving—‘ and laid 
everything at His blessed feet. Now I can trust Him. Now 
all is well.’ A few days afterwards she died. 

But there was a sequel. Her last request to me was that 
I would take charge of the baby—the latest of her family. 
Perhaps not altogether realizing what I was undertaking, I 
promised that I would. Naturally 1 turned to my mother 
for assistance, and after a certain amount of negotiation the 
little boy—Harry, we called him—was brought into our 
own home and placed under the care of my sister Emma, 
afterwards Mrs. Booth-Tucker, who was at that time in 
delicate health, and who found in the training of this baby 
delightful occupation. The child grew and prospered, and 
gave early evidence of being a child of God. While still in 
his teens he developed a singular gift for caring for the sick. 

When in 1888 my sister was married to Commissioner 
Booth-Tucker and went to India this lad begged us to send 
him also. He went, and was no sooner there than he began 
to take an interest in the sick people connected with the 
native Societies which The Army had formed in various 
places. He had a remarkable knowledge of hydropathy, 
and was able to do some good work with that system. By 
this success he won the confidence of the people. Then he 
began to lance small abscesses and so on. I purchased and 
sent him a second-hand dental outfit, and he took out bad 
teeth, and was soon allowed even to attend the Indian 
women. A remarkable gift for surgery presently developed, 
including skill in setting broken bones, and we brought him 
to London and gave him a six months’ course as ‘ dresser’ 
at one of the big hospitals. Here he proved himself some- 
thing of a genius, learning more than any ordinary dresser 
would pick up in years. Returning to India, he was placed 
in charge of a small hospital. Although he was unable, 
according to the English law, to grant a death certificate, he 
treated hundreds of cases with the greatest success. The 
hospital was enlarged, partly by the gifts of wealthy Indian 
patients whom he had benefited, and before very long he 
began to perform major operations. Realizing that this 


EARTHEN VESSELS 159 


might involve certain risks in view of his lack of qualifica- 
tion, we decided to give him a course of reading, and let 
him take a degree, which he did at the University of Illinois 
in Chicago, himself contributing towards the cost of his 
support, as well as paying all the fees by his work during 
the course. Before he was in the University a year he was 
selected by the surgeons to perform delicate operations in 
front of the students. He returned to India a fully qualified 
man, and was placed in charge of our then largest hospital, 
a new hospital in the Punjab. The war came, and he was 
one of the medical men who perished in it. 

But this is not quite the end of the story—even on 
earth—of my ‘East End baby.’ The following extract 
from the ‘ London Gazette,’ which announced the bestowal 
of the V.C. upon him, speaks for itself : 

‘Captain Andrews was senior medical officer in charge of 
the Khajuri post. Hearing that the convoy had been 
attacked, he immediately took out an aid post under heavy 
fire and established it, affording some protection to the 
wounded, but none to himself. Subsequently he was com- 
pelled to remove it, but continued most devotedly to attend 
the wounded. Finally, when an ambulance was available, 
he showed the utmost disregard for danger in collecting the 
wounded under fire and placing them in the ambulance. 
Eventually he was killed on the completion of his task.’ 

Writing of him in the British ‘ Medical Journal,’ Major- 
General Sir Patrick Hehir said: 

‘He was a man with broad human sympathies. . . . He 
was loved by the poor, and their care, comfort, and treat- 
ment were meticulously attended to in his hospital. He 
was a good operator, and crowds of people flocked from 
various parts of the Moradabad district to be treated by 
him. He designed and supervised the construction of 
The Salvation Army Hospital at Moradabad. It is a model 
of what a district hospital should be in India. It is one of 
the few hospitals in Oudh that has its own tube well. I was 
particularly struck with the admirable way in which the 
various departments of the hospital were arranged. It was 
well organized and administered. The hospital was made 


160 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


over to Government as a War Hospital in a whole-hearted 
manner by The Salvation Army, and did most laudable 
work for our sick and wounded Indian soldiers. For such a 
man the future life could have no cause for apprehension, 
and we may be certain that he was welcomed into the other 
world with the words, “‘ Well done, thou good and faithful 
servant.” ’ 


XIX 
THE CALL AND MINISTRY OF WOMAN 


THE position held by woman in The Salvation Army almost 
from the beginning has been unique. There has probably 
been nothing like it before in the history of the world, and 
it may be useful to review, however briefly, some of the 
influences and circumstances which have led to what we 
now see. 

When I say that the association of woman with The Sal- 
vation Army is unique, I am not forgetting that, so far as 
we are able to understand the circumstances, a prominent 
position was accorded to woman for a considerable period 
in the history of the early Church. Paul, who has been 
called “ the great silencer ’ so far as woman’s public ministry 
is concerned, nevertheless entrusted women with some of 
the most difficult and delicate work of the infant Churches. 
It is quite possible, not to say probable, that in this as in 
other matters his views had changed as he had gained ex- 
perience. Whether this be so or not, there is sufficient 
ground for saying that woman did play an important part 
in early Christianity. She was recognized as a teacher and 
guide in the first centuries. She took her place by the side 
of man in proclaiming her Saviour, in suffering for her testi- 
mony, and in dying for the truth. Authentic records of the 
early martyrs are meagre, but so far as they exist it is clearly 
seen that woman had a place among them fully equal to 
that of man. Indeed, the complexity and delicacy of her 
nature made it possible to inflict upon her ignominy and 
anguish which her brethren were spared. And she did not 
quail. 

But for one reason or another she fell into the background 
after the first two or three hundred years so far as public 


M 161 


162 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


ministry was concerned. Later the Roman Church raised 
up some remarkable women, as, for instance, Theresa of 
Avila, Catherine of Sienna, Bridget of Sweden, and in these 
islands, Hilda of Whitby, and Juliana of Norwich. Ireland 
had a Bridget as well as a Patrick. 

Nearer to our own times George Fox revived in theory 
a great deal that had been in abeyance, and the early Quaker 
records, both of England and Ireland, give us some splendid 
examples of women ‘ ministers.’ But here again, for one 
reason or another, there was a great falling off shortly before 
and immediately after George Fox’s death. Methodism, 
also, strove to give woman a place of testimony for her Lord, 
and although the records of her occupying pulpits are very 
few, there is no doubt that some Methodist women, especially 
during the first twenty years after John Wesley’s death, 
were useful and powerful. Methodism inherited a great 
difficulty in this matter from the fact that the Methodists 
grew up in the established Church. To put a woman, no 
matter how gifted, into the pulpit of the parish Church 
would have been considered a very improper thing, not only 
from the point of view of the Church itself, but from that 
of the State. Nevertheless, many Methodist women took 
up their cross, and here and there among them were powerful 
preachers and successful soul-winners. : 

No surprise need be felt, therefore, that The Salvation 
Army, even in its earliest days, should move in this direction. 
But it was not merely an evangelistic impulse—which was 
evidently the origin of woman’s position in the societies to 
which I have referred—that led The Army to take the course 
it did, though no doubt a similar impulse played a part. 
With us the position taken arose from deep convictions first 
expressed by Catherine Booth, and from the realization of 
a much wider calling of God than anything which had 
influenced either the Friends or the Methodists. | 

Like so much in the history of The Army, we can trace 
the origin of this movement—for it clearly was a movement 
within a greater movement—to the work of the Holy 
Spirit in the minds and hearts of the Founders. There is 
still in existence a correspondence which shows how, though 


THE CALL AND MINISTRY OF WOMAN 163 


by very slow degrees at first, the Founder came to the 
same judgment as Catherine Booth with regard to woman’s 
position. I will quote a few sentences from a letter written 
by him in 1855, a few months before their marriage, reply- 
ing to some arguments of hers: 

Thy remarks on Woman’s position I will read again. . . . From 
the first reading I cannot see anything in them to lead me for one 
moment to think of altering my opinion. You combat a great deal 
that I hold as firmly as you do—viz., her equality, her perfect equality, 
as a whole—as a being. But as to concede that she is man’s equal, 
or capable of becoming man’s equal in intellectual attainments or 
prowess—I must say that is contradicted by experience in the world 
and [by] my honest conviction. You know, my dear, I acknowledge 
the superiority of your sex in very many things—in others I believe 
her inferior. Vice veysa with man. 

I would not stop a woman preaching on any account. I would 
not encourage one to begin. You should preach if you felt moved 
thereto ; felt equaltothe task. I would not stay you if I had power 
to do so. Although J should not like it. It is easy for you to say 
my views are the result of prejudice; perhaps they are. I am for 
the world’s Salvation ; I will quarrel with no means that promises 
help. 

This letter is interesting because it shows the views which 
were entertained at that time by those who may reasonably 
be regarded as being among the most advanced in all matters 
relating to freedom in the service of God. It is also useful 
because it shows the line of difficulty which, notwithstanding 
his wonderful Catholicity, the Founder felt and which had 
to be combated in succeeding periods when advances were 
taken which led to our present position. 

Catherine Booth’s own convictions in this matter were 
not reached without very considerable thought. That those 
views were entertained before she met the Founder may be 
seen from a remarkable letter (she was then 21) which she ad- 
dressed to a Minister for whom she had a high regard and who 
had made some critical remarks in her hearing. She writes: 

Permit me, my dear sir, to ask whether you have ever made the 
subject of woman’s equality as a being the matter of calm investiga- 
tion and thought? . 

So far as Scriptural evidence is concerned, did I but possess ability 
to do justice to the subject, I dare take my stand on it against the 


1¢ William Booth.’ By Harold Begbie. Vol. i, p. 255. 


164 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


world in defending her perfect equality. And it is because I am 
persuaded that no honest unprejudiced investigation of the sacred 
volume can give perpetuity to the mere assumptions and false notions 
which have gained currency in society on this subject, that I so 
earnestly commend it to your attention. 

That woman is, in consequence of her inadequate education, 
generally inferior to man intellectually, I admit. But that she is 
naturally so, as your remarks seem to imply, I see no cause to believe. 
I think the disparity is as easily accounted for as the difference be- 
tween woman intellectually in this country and under the degrading 
slavery of heathen lands. No argument, in my judgment, can be 
drawn from past experience on this point, because the past has been 
false in theory and wrong in practice. Never yet in the history of 
the world has woman been placed on an intellectual footing with 
man. Her training from babyhood, even in this highly favoured 
land, has hitherto been such as to cramp and paralyse rather than 
develop and strengthen her energies, and calculated to crush and 
wither her aspirations after mental greatness rather than to excite 
and stimulate them. And even where the more directly depressing 
influence has been withdrawn, the indirect and more powerful 
stimulus has been wanting.} 


This letter clearly sets forth one determining factor in 
my mother’s attitude on the woman question. She claimed 
that woman was to take her place by the side of man in all 
things relating to the Kingdom of God, not only because 
redemption equally extended to her with man—‘ In Christ 
Jesus there is neither male nor female ’—but because she 
was, as a being, intellectually, morally, spiritually his equal. 

We see the same thought, but more fully developed, in 
a letter to the Founder, one of the last of the love letters : 


I am ready to admit that in the majority of cases the training of 
woman has made her man’s inferior, as under the degrading slavery 
of heathen lands she is inferior to her own sex in Christian coun- 
tries; but that naturally she is in any respect except physical 
strength and courage inferior to man I cannot see cause to believe, 
and I am sure no one can prove it from the Word of God, and it is 
on this foundation that professors of religion always try to establish 
it. I believe that one of the greatest boons to the race would be 
woman’s exaltation to her proper position mentally and spiritually. 
Who can tell its consequences to posterity ? 2 


After a reference to the women of the Old Testament who 
exercised the prophetic gift, she goes on: 

God having once spoken directly by woman, and man having 
1° William Booth,’ by Harold Begbie. Vol.i, p.126. Ibid. Vol.i, p.270. 


THE CALL AND MINISTRY OF WOMAN 165 


once recognized her divine commission and obeyed it, on what ground 
is omnipotence to be restricted, or woman’s spiritual labours ignored ? 
Who shall dare say unto the Lord, ‘ What doest Thou ?’ when He 
‘pours out His Spirit upon His handmaidens,’ or when it is poured 
out shall I render it null with impunity ? If, indeed, there is ‘ in 
Christ Jesus neither male nor female,’ but in all touching His King- 
dom ‘ they are one,’ who shall dare thrust woman out of the Church’s 
operations, or presume to put my candle which God has lighted under 
A Ouse) 2600 2. 

If God has given her ability, why should not woman persuade the 
vacillating, instruct and console the penitent, and pour out her soul 
in prayer for sinners ? 4 

She ends the letter with some passionate words about the 
equality of woman with man in Christ, and there is a fine 
irony in her suggestion that if modern quibblers had been 
among the disciples to whom a woman announced the Lord’s 
resurrection they would have hesitated to receive such 
tidings from her lips. In this letter there is to be found a 
sufficient apology for the whole position which The Army 
has claimed for and given to woman in its ranks. 


The Founder, however, moved slowly, and it is evident 
from letters and memoranda too voluminous to quote here 
that it was not until some years later that he came fully 
to accept the position for which Mrs. Booth contended. A 
curious circumstance contributed to this result. They were 
stationed at Gateshead-on-Tyne. Some special meetings 
were being conducted at Newcastle, just across the river, by 
an American evangelist named Palmer, helped by his wife. 
Mrs. Phoebe Palmer was a devout and also an eloquent 
woman, and her services were popular. They attracted the 
attention of a minister of one of the Nonconformist bodies 
who had formerly been Vicar of the parish, and he made a 
studied criticism of woman as a preacher of the Gospel, 
attacking Mrs. Palmer with more or less asperity. Mrs. 
Booth felt called upon to reply to this attack, and wrote 
and published a pamphlet of some thirty pages dealing with 
the whole question in what has generally been conceded to 
be a comprehensive and effective manner.” The preparation 

1‘ William Booth,’ by Harold Begbie. Vol. i, p. 270. 


2¢Female Ministry, or Woman’s Right to Preach the Gospel’ (the 
substance of this pamphlet can be found reprinted in ‘ Practical Religion’). 


166 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


of that pamphlet involved considerable research, and in 
order that she might reveal any weaknesses in her own 
argument she fully discussed the whole subject with the 
Founder. It was these conversations and the reasoning they 
evolved which resulted in his coming completely to take the 
view she had already urged upon him, and from that time 
no serious question arose in either of their minds as to the 
equality of woman with man. 

When the Mission originated in the East of London, 
there came immediately to the front converts who were 
obviously gifted in public testimony. For a long time the 
forces were very small, and the immediate seizure of the 
opportunity for open-air work which was afforded by the 
Mile End Waste taxed the resources of the infant Society to 
the utmost.! One consequence of this was that, without 
any deliberate plan, or even very serious consideration, the 
women who could speak to the crowds were encouraged, even 
urged, to do so equally with the men, and it was soon ob- 
served that they could often win the sympathy of those to 
whom they spoke more easily than could the men. The 
same thing was seen in the private meetings. There the 
women, though often reluctant and hesitating, spoke with 
an impressiveness which seemed quite as appealing as any- 
thing the men were able to command. Thus by degrees, 
and without any preconceived arrangement, though with the 
entire approval of the Founders, woman took for herself a 
place in the Mission, and began a work which proved to be 
of the greatest consequence. 

While the work of the Mission was confined to the one 
station at Whitechapel, the care of those who had joined 
themselves to the little Society, was easily compassed by 
the Founder and by one or two volunteers who gave him 
their spare time. But after the first few years, when stations 
were opened at Bethnal Green, at Millwall, at Poplar, at 
Limehouse, and later, at Canning Town, it became necessary 
to employ others for this work. The first of these were 


1 The Mile End Waste was a strip of unoccupied land about a mile long 
between the side walk and the main road of the Mile End Road, one of the 
most popular thoroughfares of the East of London. Tens of thousands 
of people passed over it daily. 


THE CALL AND MINISTRY OF WOMAN 167 


working women, who were engaged for part of their time. 
Actually the first was a Mrs. Collingridge, who worked for 
her bread in a candle factory in Millwall. She and her deli- 
cate husband were among the early converts of the Mission, 
and she showed a great aptitude for this work. She received 
a few shillings weekly from the funds ‘ for boot leather, and 
to enable her to get her tea when away from home.’ She 
filled up a careful return—some of those returns are still in 
existence—showing the number of persons visited and in- 
cluding a brief report upon special cases. Mrs. Collingridge 
became the forerunner of others, and at each of the Stations, 
before the appointment of regular Evangelists, there were 
one or two such local part-time workers. On the whole, 
they were well received by the people. 

After the first two or three years the Mission was organ- 
ized on a very definite plan. Each Station or Society had 
its own duly appointed workers—Treasurer, Secretary, 
Elders—who together formed an Elders’ Meeting for the 
transaction of certain local business. Other lay workers, 
known by various terms, also came into being. From the 
beginning women took a part in this local organization, and 
although in some cases that part was relatively small, it was 
an important fact. Many of the women who thus shared 
the burden of the Stations did splendid work, softening oppo- 
sition, which at times was fierce, and helping the weak and 
trembling with whom some of the men had little patience. 

It must not be supposed that thisarrangement was carried 
out without difficulty. Some of the men who had been con- 
verted in the Mission—some, indeed, who had been raised 
from the very gutters—as soon as they found themselves in 
office and with certain influence in their own Societies, 
demurred when women were placed beside them in similar 
positions. Men who had been brought up amidst the ruffian- 
ism of the lowest districts, objected to women being regarded 
as on an equality with themselves, and again and again, men 
who gave the most hopeful promise of future usefulness de- 
clined to work with women, and were only brought round 
after great effort and much prayer. Some, I am afraid, were 
never brought round. The difficulty was not a little 


168 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


increased from the fact that though many of the women in 
question were fully alive to their own usefulness and had 
deep experiences of spiritual religion, they hesitated or drew 
back in the presence of opposition from the men. They 
suffered equally with the men who objected, from the long 
prejudices and ignorances of the past. 

Nor was it only the men who objected. There were 
certain women who raised difficulties. Some married women, 
in particular, thought it unwise and even indelicate to bring 
their single sisters into any sort of confidential relations with 
the members, or, indeed, into any public service in which 
they had to deal with men. 

But we held on. The women who had taken up the 
burden of the work were encouraged—sometimes, I think, 
coaxed—to persevere. They were met in little companies, 
and were urged with infinite patience to take up their 
Cross, to hold fast to the opportunity which had been given 
them, and as a rule they did not disappoint us. 

The problem was complicated by the fact that some of 
the women who had taken up local positions were married 
women whose husbands, either saved or unsaved, objected 
to their undertaking any sort of public work, especially in 
association with such a despised and openly ridiculed com- 
munity as ours quickly became. But here again, convinced 
that God was guiding them, the leaders persevered. Some 
of the women withdrew owing to their husbands’ objections, 
but the majority overcame their difficulties, and often had, 
in addition to other joys, the joy of leading both husband 
and children to Christ. 

This brings me to a further development. The women 
Evangelists, although very acceptable and useful, were not 
at first entrusted with the responsible control of a Corps or 
Society. To place a woman in charge of one of these Societies 
—or, as they would be called outside The Army, Churches— 
involved quite a new departure. Opinion was divided 
amongst the most thoughtful of the leaders. The Army 
Mother herself had never quite contemplated placing women 
in positions which would involve their authority over men. 
This would be going further than anything recorded even 


THE CALL AND MINISTRY OF WOMAN 169 


in the early Church. The Founder delayed for a consider- 
able time before making his decision. Commissioner Railton, 
who was always ready for new departures, favoured entrust- 
ing women with the responsibilities and authorities which 
we had given to the men. Some of the leading Evangelists, 
on the other hand—all good men and true—were opposed 
to anything of this kind. They said, ‘ Let the woman help 
us, but do not give her any authority over men.’ John Allen,? 
probably the most spiritually-minded of all those early 
fighters, and a true lover of souls, felt very strongly that 
there was something positively dangerous to the woman in 
placing her in any position of public notoriety. 

The Army Mother hesitated. She felt that the women, 
especially the single women, who might be appointed to com- 
mand Corps, would undoubtedly be placed in circumstances 
of danger and temptation. That aspect of the matter was 
fully considered. Without safeguards she never would have 
agreed, as she did agree, that the women should assume these 
positions. Indeed, there was a kind of undertaking given 
that single women should always be appoinied in couples. 

At the time when this question arose it caused great 
perplexity. We only wanted to do what was the best. That 
a great opportunity had arisen could not be denied. The 
difficulty of raising, in sufficient numbers, men competent 
for the work was only too manifest. The call for leaders 
from station after station and town after town was constantly 
ringing in our ears. And there before our eyes was un- 
mistakeable evidence of woman’s remarkable acceptableness 
as a messenger of Christ and her wonderful success in win- 
ning souls. The work of the Local Officers? and of those 
early ‘shepherds’ to whom I have referred, pointed also 
to the probability that many women would be found 
possessed of other gifts—the gifts necessary for the conduct 
of secular affairs, for the guidance in spiritual things of those 
under their care, and for the management and control of the 
people. Finally, therefore, it was decided to make a trial. 


1 See ‘ The Salvation Navvy ’—the life-story of Captain John Allen. 


2 Lay workers, who have entered into very definite undertakings as to 
obedience and experience, but who receive no payment. 


eet at. -_ 


170 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


The first woman to be appointed in sole charge of one of 
the Societies was Captain Annie Davis, who afterwards be- 
came the wife of Commissioner Ridsdel.1 She was sent to 
Barking (a suburb of East London) in July, 1875. She was 
a remarkable little woman, gifted less from the public stand- 
point than from devotion to principle and ability to manage 
and control. Her appointment proved a complete success. 
The men members of the Society were soon as devoted to 
her as they could have been to any man, and she, guided 
from above, watchful and prayerful and conscious that she 
was making important experiments for the guidance of 
others, overcame every difficulty. From that time no 
serious hesitation was felt, and women soon came to be 
appointed to take charge of Corps just as men. 

There were, of course, notwithstanding this success, still 
some of the Evangelists—or Officers, as I will now call them 
—who objected. They doubted the reality of the success 
reported, and still questioned the possibility of the women 
maintaining the work which they (the men) had begun. But 
all these questions were set at rest by one circumstance. 
The rapid extension of The Army after 1878 taxed all our 
resources, and the Founder decided that he would send 
women just as he sent men, not only to maintain work al- 
ready commenced, but to establish new Stations. It was, 
no doubt, an adventure. There was a great deal of head- 
shaking aboutit. Butit was aninstant success. And when, 
later on, some of the brethren who had doubted the capacity 
of their sisters to control and maintain the work of God 
committed to them, came themselves to succeed these sis- 
ters, and were appointed to take charge of the Corps which 
their sister comrades had raised up, they soon found that 
the women had proved fully equal—sometimes more than 
equal—to themselves. 

The appointment of women to take command of Corps 
encouraged other developments, and we soon had women in 
charge of various important undertakings. My sister Emma 
—‘ The Consul,’ as she was afterwards called—was placed 


1 The Commissioner is now, after forty-two years of happy service, on 
our retired list. 


THE CALL AND MINISTRY OF WOMAN 171 


in charge of the Women’s Training Home. Then my sister 
Eva, widely known as the Field Commissioner, was success- 
ful in the charge of one of our large London Corps. Mrs. 
Bramwell Booth, a year after our marriage, took over the 
work which later spread into many parts of the world as the 
Women’s Social Work, and afterwards other women, as 
occasion demanded, were placed with full confidence in 
various commands. 

This brings me to another stage in our evolution. It was 
not until a few years after their appointment to Corps that 
it seemed desirable to place women in any of those Higher 
Commands which also involved authority over men. Many of 
our men Officers (and some women also) who had been quite 
happy to work side by side with women Captains who were, 
like themselves, placed over Corps, objected—in some cases 
strongly—to being themselves placed under women who were 
designated for the position of Divisional Commanders.' 
But, there again, the progress of the work and an unexpected 
development secured the way. Two women of striking 
character quarried the road for their comrades. 

My sister Catherine in her work as pioneer and leader 
of The Army in France and Switzerland after 1881, and 
Commissioner Hannah Ouchterlony, as pioneer and leader 
of our work in Sweden after 1883, made it perfectly plain, 
so that those who ran could read, that there was no 
adequate reason for withholding the higher Commands 
from women. The work in France was small, and my 
sister always had a serious difficulty in that she never 
completely silenced the criticism of some in her immediate 
Staff. The work in Sweden, on the other hand, grew with 
great rapidity, but Commissioner Ouchterlony also was 
not without serious difficulties in that some of her staff, 
though devoted to her and to The Army, never entirely 
accepted her authority. Yet in both these Commands 
God was so evidently using the Leaders, and so evidently 
guiding them in the rule and management of the work, 


1 A Divisional Commander has the oversight of a defined area containing 
a number of places in which The Army is working or intending to work. 
The D.C. answers in many respects to the Bishops of the Anglican and 
Roman Churches, 


49? ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


that without our having to make any show of the matter, 
the way was clear. The barriers of fear and prejudice were 
broken down, men and women alike came to acknowledge 
that woman no less than man might possess those natural 
gifts and receive those endowments of the Spirit which were 
needed for the governing and leadership of the people of God. 

By this I do not mean to say that there are not still in 
The Army men Officers working under women—and, for 
that matter, women Officers also—who would prefer to work 
under men. I do say, however, that, with perhaps here 
and there an exception, all that small jealousy which was 
so troublesome in the past, and the prejudices which belong 
to narrow and selfish minds, have become things of yester- 
day. I do occasionally hear an objection raised to the 
command of a woman, and I am sometimes challenged by 
suggestions that there are among our women leaders those 
who are influenced in their rule by the desire for praise of 
men or by vanity or by other unworthy considerations. But 
I am persuaded that even if these grievous things be so they 
are exceptional. 

Woman has won her place in The Army. She has won 
a very wonderful place in the world by means of The Army. 
It may be worth while to remark here that, though seldom 
acknowledged, there is little doubt that the women of 
The Army have played a part in the general emancipation 
of woman which we see to be going on in the Western nations. 
In the political struggle, The Army, of course, has taken 
no part, but in the higher realms of the fight, the hand of 
the Salvation woman, both Officer and Soldier, has helped 
to carry the banner to victory. The women who marched 
at the head of the little bands of despised Salvationists in 
years gone by were accustoming the public mind to the 
spectacle of woman in command, of woman taking an active 
unshrinking share in public duty, and overcoming by the 
grace of God her supposed inferiorities. Thus we may truly 
say that we were opening a door through which women might 
carry the Message of Love and Life to multitudes who would 
never receive it save from a woman’s lips. That door will 
never again be shut. 


XX 
BENCH AND BAR 


OnE of the first difficulties which my father encountered, 
after the Christian Mission (as The Salvation Army was first 
called) had become a distinct entity, was the question of 
the holding of property. Any property involves law. We 
made an experiment in the early seventies along the lines of 
certain Nonconformist bodies. A Model Deed for the holding 
of property was in one case adopted, with trustees whose 
powers were defined. This Deed was hung upon the Con- 
ference which had been called into existence, and such an 
arrangement might well have proved quite plain sailing, but 
the Conference itself came to grief, and therefore, of course, 
such a plan for the general holding of our property fell to 
the ground. 

When the Founder decided to take affairs into his own 
hands, and began to issue regulations on the principle now 
adopted, we came at once to the question of property 
control. We had in mind two main purposes: first, to 
make provision for really securing the property for the 
objects for which it was obtained and to impress it with 
its trust character; and secondly, to secure that the 
General for the time being (or, as he was then called, the 
General Superintendent) should have ample powers of dis- 
position and control. This latter was in some respects a new 
idea, and involved us in considerable legal difficulties. The 
Deed (or Deed Poll, as it is more correctly named) that was 
finally settled was the fruit of much thought and prayer. 
It was adopted by the Conference of 1878, and enrolled in 
the Chancery Division in the August of that year. 

My first introduction to counsel of any standing was 
over the drafting of that Deed. One incident I remember 


173 


174 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


had to do with Mr. Cozens-Hardy, afterwards Master of the 
Rolls. In his gloomy, candle-lit chambers in the Temple 
one dismal afternoon, after the Courts had risen, we assem- 
bled for a consultation. Mr. Cozens-Hardy, as I remember 
him, was a small man physically, sitting with his wig at the 
back of his head (he had just come out of Court), and 
looking up from the piles of documents on the table before 
him to scrutinize the faces of his visitors. After a long 
discussion, Cozens-Hardy said, with a touch of acerbity, 
“Mr. Booth, you want me to make you into a Pope, and I 
do not think it can be done.’ 

‘Well, Mr. Cozens-Hardy,’ replied the Founder in a 
flash, responding with humour, as he always did when any- 
one adopted that tone to him, ‘1 am sure you will get as 
near to it as you suitably can!’ 

Forty years after that, an important question involving 
the interpretation of that Deed came before Lord Justice 
Cozens-Hardy in his then capacity as Master of the Rolls. 
While nothing in the judgment he then delivered would 
have led a stranger to think that he had ever seen the Deed 
before, he commented upon its evident purport and inten- 
tion in a way which made it plain to those who had been 
present at that distant interview that the circumstance was 
clearly within his recollection. 

That Deed became the ground of many battles. Like, 
I suppose, other really important legal instruments, it has 
gathered strength to itself by the judgments of courts in 
various lands bearing upon its provisions. Looking back 
now for the more than forty years since it was executed 
by the Founder and adopted by the representatives of 
The Army, we can say that it accomplishes, in fact, what we 
wanted. It has impressed the holdings of The Army in the 
most unquestionable manner with their trust character, and 
yet it has secured to the General for the time being the 
absolute control of the property within the limits of his 
trust. It has not made ‘ the General for the time being’ a 
‘ corporation sole,’ as the bishops are (and as the General 
has in later years been made in some other countries), but 
in practice it has had almost the same effect. 


BENCH AND BAR 175 


A later law business of a serious character was in con- 
nexion with the Grecian and Eagle Tavern -litigation. 
There I came into touch with a distinguished counsel who 
has proved a lifelong friend and supporter, Mr. (now Sir) 
Edward Clarke. He was our leading counsel in the action 
brought against us for breach of covenant in using the Eagle 
Tavern for purposes other than those of a public-house. 
The case came before Mr. Justice Stephen (Fitzjames 
Stephen), the only English judge I have come across who 
has seemed—in my opinion—incurably biased against 
us. My father was in the witness-box, and Clarke was 
examining. 

“Now, General Booth,’ said Clarke, ‘you met with 
opposition, did you not ?’ 

The General answered, Yes, we had met with opposi- 
tion: the Devil was always ready to oppose. 

Thereupon the gruff voice of the Judge struck in—so 
gruff as to be almost inarticulate, like the growl of a bear, 
‘ We-don’t-want-the-Devil-in-here.’ The court did not know 
whether to tremble or to laugh! I think that at that time 
Stephen’s mind was already going. His resignation was due 
to a disease which began gradually to affect his mental 
powers. 

We lost the case in that court; but we recovered a 
large part of what we lost and part of our costs in the Court 
of Appeal, where Nathaniel Lindley, afterwards Master of 
the Rolls, expressed in the course of his judgment one of the 
most beautiful pieces of English to be found in the law 
records. 

Before his conduct of this case, Sir Edward Clarke was 
quite unknown to us. One incident I remember which 
helped our acquaintance. He was standing with one or 
two of usinthe corridor of the court after one of the adjourn- 
ments, when one of our witnesses, named Archer, stepped 
up to him, and said, ‘ We shall pray for you, Mr. Clarke.’ 
Thereupon Clarke took off his hat, and stood still uncovered 
for a moment. It made a deep impression on us. I have 
been in association with Sir Edward Clarke since then in a 
dozen or more business cases, and I have always been struck 


176 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


by his absolute sincerity and conscientiousness. In his 
“The Story of My Life’ (Murray) he refers to his friend- 
ship with the old General, his admiration for The Army, and 
what it has done for the poor of every nation; also the 
pleasure which it gave him (Sir Edward) to be caricatured in 
‘Punch’ in Salvation Army uniform, staggering under and 
vigorously beating a very big drum ! 

Sir Edward Clarke has been an adept at early rising to 
pursue his legal work. Perhaps, however, he may have been 
beaten in this respect by Sir Richard Webster, later the 
Lord Chief. I believe that at four o’clock every morning, 
summer and winter, a light would peep out in Webster’s 
home, denoting that he was beginning his labours. Webster, 
who as Attorney-General led against us in the Old Bailey 
prosecution, was interested in children, and took an active 
part in promoting the Children Act, 1908, in the House of 
Lords. This brought us into correspondence with him—by 
this time he was Lord Alverstone—for The Army took great 
interest in that measure, and got some of its ideas incor- 
porated, thanks to the Home Secretary of the day, Mr. (now 
Sir) Herbert Samuel. 

Another great lawyer with whom I came in contact from 
time to time was John Rigby, afterwards Attorney-General 
and then Lord Justice of Appeal. We first employed him 
in a matter which was heard before Mr. Justice North, 
in 1887. This was the first case to raise the question of 
the charitable character of The Salvation Army trusts. 
Wright, who also afterwards became a judge—and a very 
good judge—was against us. It was an interesting case 
in that the money was a legacy from a benevolent brewer 
at Hereford, the amount in question being £4,000 cash 
and {£4,000 to be paid on the death of the legatee’s 
niece. The case was made memorable for us by some 
observations by Mr. Justice North when deciding in our 
favour. 

Rigby was one of the most delightful of men, but not at 
all professional either in manner or appearance. He would 
have passed any day for a sturdy Norfolk farmer. He had 
a wilfully wandering beard, and was a great smoker. A 


BENCH AND BAR 177 


common occurrence with him was that when he wanted to 
get out of his pocket a handkerchief or some papers a pipe 
would tumble out in the process. It did not seem to matter 
which pocket he dived in, the pipe came out all the same ! 
His chambers were the most dismal, I think, I have ever 
been in—a desolate, doldrums of a place, dark and melan- 
choly, lit by a sputtering lamp that would seldom burn. Yet 
at this time he was all but the head of the Bar so far as trust 
and equity business was concerned. On more than one 
occasion, seated in this miserable gloom, he would say to 
us, ‘ Have confidence in your own scheme. You have here 
all the elements of freedom combined with power.’ He 
greatly strengthened the Founder’s belief in the wisdom of 
our legal arrangements. 

Rigby remained a friend to the end of his life, gave us 
a little money, and made at least one speech which was of 
great service to us. It was at a Mansion House meeting, 
after he became a Lord Justice of Appeal. He declared 
that the Headquarters of The Salvation Army was an 
excellent school for the training of good men of business. 
“I found them [The Army leaders] sensible and far-seeing 
men of business, moderate and fair in the statement of their 
case; in fact, in that respect I have never found any body 
of men that I could praise more to my own satisfaction than 
when, to the best of my humble powers, I have advised 
them as to their legal rights. I say this for them, that | 
never advised them as to what they ought to do, but 
immediately they realized their position. They, uniformly 
acting in the most liberal and fair spirit, took those steps 
which I think I should have taken myself under the circum- 
stances.’ He also spoke for us in the House more than 
once, and was always ready to inconvenience himself in 
our interests, and seldom took from us anything but 
nominal fees. 

When the ‘ Darkest England ’ scheme was started, a new 
Deed setting up a distinct trust was required, and it was to 
Rigby and Sir Charles Sargant, now a Lord Justice, that we 
turned. The final drafting of the Deed had not been 
settled; there had been some delay, and as it was desired 


N 


178 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


to execute it in a public meeting on a given date, it fell to my 
lot to put some pressure upon the legal gentlemen to bring 
their work to a conclusion. The final touches were given to 
the draft by Sir John Rigby in the cooling room of a Turkish 
bath in St. James’s Street, whither I and Mr. Frost, one of 
our solicitors, had followed him. He came out to us clad 
in a bathing sheet, and in these unusual surroundings and 
attire he went over the Deed for the last time. He gave 
us about two hours, and finally put his initials to the draft, 
which as passed by him was adopted. The incident shows 
the keenness and sympathy with which he was ready at all 
times to assist us in our work. 

Lord Russell, of whose advocacy in the Armstrong case 
I have had something to say in previous chapters, was one 
of the most quick-tempered men I have ever met. A most 
attractive personality and a beautiful talker, but woe betide 
the subordinate who displeased him! Much of his irrita- 
bility I put down to his excessive snuff-taking, though the 
immediate effect of the habit was to restore his evenness of 
temper. I have never seen or heard of any one who could 
take the amount of snuff which Charles Russell consumed. 
He would take a snuff-box the size of a pack of cards out of 
his left-hand waistcoat pocket, knock the corner of it with 
one hand against the other, then open it and shake out 
into his palm a dose about the size of a filbert, close the 
box, and go forward to complete satisfaction! The pro- 
cess ended only when all the stuff had disappeared, some of 
it scattering far and near! Then he would produce an 
enormous silk pocket-handkerchief and proceed to modify 
conditions in the usual way. The curious thing about it 
was that for the moment this seemed to have the most 
soothing effect on him. His voice, always very charming, 
assumed its most silvery tones, his expression became 
benign, he stood forth as the sweet composer of unfortunate 
differences, and his demeanour which a few minutes before 
had approached that of a storm at sea, became that of the 
most courteous gentleman. 

He worked on the Armstrong case as, he told us, he had 
worked on no other. He was a Roman Catholic, and strict 


BENCH AND BAR 179 


in the observance of certain practices of his Church—a 
religious man, I believe, in a very strict sense of the word. 
He had a great objection to Sunday work. This case, how- 
ever, was a very heavy one, and Sunday after Sunday he 
was at his chambers toiling over the papers and speaking 
personally to the witnesses. He had been at the bar for 
twenty-five years, and never, he told me, had had a case 
which had made him work on Sundays until he came to 
ours. He really sympathized with the great object we had 
had in view and put his heart into his pleading—a thing 
which it is often so difficult to get counsel to do. He was 
a most able counsel on our behalf in other cases also, and 
made one of the most dignified and brilliant Lord Chiefs 
that the English Bench has seen for many years—even 
though he decided against us in the case I have already 
mentioned ! 

One of the most spiritually-minded men in the legal 
profession whom I have met was Earl Cairns, who was 
Lord Chancellor in Disraeli’s Government. Although a 
lawyer of outstanding brilliance, and a man who moved in 
the highest social and intellectual circles, his was a simple, 
beautiful Christlike spirit, with a chief care for the interests 
of the Kingdom of God. He came to many of our Meetings. 
He had a great admiration for my dear mother, showed no 
little kindness to me, and with Lady Cairns took a deep 
interest in the work. They did not, of course, approve of 
some things which were done by us and said so, but they 
helped us when friends were few. 

Lord Cairns always brought the question to the practical 
issue: ‘ What can I do to help you?’ And he made more 
than one address, which went forth to the world, and, 
coming from such a source, created confidence in the 
Founder, and encouraged people to aid us financially. He 
made a remark on one occasion which was widely advertised : 


I can only say that as soon as I can find another organization 
moving amongst this same class of people, bringing the Gospel to 
bear upon them, and producing such results as this Army is pro- 
ducing, and doing this work in a way more free from the possibility 
of criticism, I may perhaps prefer that organization. But at present 
there is no such organization, and we are in this position—that we 


180 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


must either take the agency of The Salvation Army, and make the 
best of it, or else we must give up all those masses of people as 
hopeless and abandoned for ever. We cannot, most of us, go and 
work in the places where the forces of The Salvation Army work. 
We cannot do it in person; but it is surely a great privilege for us, 
if we cannot do the work ourselves, to be able to help forward those 
who can and will do it. 


Not many men accustomed to legal restraint have been 
able so to yield themselves to a great enthusiasm. I shall 
never forget Lord Cairns in connexion with the opening of 
the Congress Hall at Clapton in 1882. The place was filled 
as only we know how to fill buildings! There could not have 
been fewer than four thousand people present. It was the 
culmination of a great effort. The opening of those premises 
was quite an event for us at that time, and we were all in 
high spirits. It was then that there was first introduced in 
public what we afterwards came to call the “ Wave Offering.’ 
Pocket-handkerchiefs were brought out and waved during 
the singing of some chorus of praise to God. Lord Cairns 
produced his pocket-handkerchief and waved it with the 
rest. He entered with all the simplicity and enthusiasm of 
a Salvationist into this moment of special gladness. And 
then, aS we resumed our seats more or less breathless his 
lordship said to me, ‘I do hope we are not unduly 
excited!’ Ifancy that he was at that moment thankful 
that Lady Cairns was not present ! 

This has become a chapter of personal reminiscences of 
great lawyers rather than a story of the law as it has 
affected—or has been affected by—The Salvation Army. 
Some reflections on the legal procedure of different countries 
must be for another chapter, but the personal reminiscences 
of great lawyers are by no means exhausted. 


XXI 
MORE ABOUT THE LAw’s MAJESTY 


ONE good thing that The Army has done—which was not 
within the direct vision of the Founder—has been to estab- 
lish a body of legal opinion that has become a powerful 
instrument for protecting and maintaining liberty’s fair 
work in this and other lands. Not only in the British Empire, 
but in countries as different as Germany and Switzerland 
and the United States, we have on record a set of judgments 
that have not only helped us (and continue to help us) in 
adjusting our trust position and our work generally to the 
legal requirements of the various countries which The Army 
has entered, but have also been of great assistance to other 

bodies working for liberty and righteousness. | 

Our experience of legal affairs in various countries makes 
it possible for me? to attempt some comparisons which may 
be of interest. I cannot, however, make it too clear that in 
this connexion I am speaking of things as we happened to 
find them, and as they have impressed themselves upon my 
own mind. There may be a good deal to be said by others 
who look at these things from different v ew-points or who 
have had different experiences. 

I should say that by far the slowest, most cumbersome, 
and most costly legal proceedings in the world are those of 
the United Kingdom. This may be the result—or partly 
the result—of the slow, peculiar, and individual growth of 
the various bodies of statutory enactment, Case law and 
Custom, which have come to constitute English Law as we 
know it to-day. However this may be, the fact, I think, 
is what I have stated. The most direct, expeditious, and 


1TI say ‘me’ chiefly because the law affairs of The Army have been 
mainly under my direction. 


181 


182 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


incomparably most economical proceedings of a correspond- 
ing nature are those of Germany. In the courts of first 
instance in Germany, answering to the Police and County 
Courts here, I have obtained judgments in a week or ten 
days, and at a cost of fifty shillings, which here would have 
taken six weeks or perhaps three months, and cost anything 
up to £20 or £30 or more. In the larger questions which 
come before the courts, those of Germany can do the business 
in perhaps a quarter of the time occupied over here, and at 
one-fifth of the expense and do it quite as well. 

In the United States—which is, of course, a newer 
country, and has had the English experience to build upon 
—the legal system is also immensely in advance of that of 
this country, particularly in expedition, though something 
has to be taken off that advantage because of the large and 
easy facilities for appeals and the means available to liti- 
gants for prolonging the proceedings between the hearing of 
appeals. Once in court, however, everything makes for 
thoroughness, for the practical application of agreed legal 
principles (which are much the same everywhere, and, of 
course, largely correspond with the British), and for quick- 
ness. Some of the most important judgments which we 
have obtained in connexion with freedom of action in our 
methods and the settlement of our property have been 
obtained in the United States in the course of a few months, 
while corresponding actions in the old country would have 
dragged on for a couple of years. 

In Canada and Australia the position is not quite so 
good in some respects. The judiciary in those countries, 
however, is extremely careful. The courts of appeal have 
at their head men not only of commanding ability, but of 
the most scrupulous rectitude and principle. 

Speaking generally, I entertain the highest opinion of the 
judicial systems of all the Western nations so far as I know 
them, and indeed my experience is that all over the world 
our Western justice is recognized as the very criterion of 
what justice should be. If I were asked to suggest changes, 
I would inquire whether in England and Scotland the 
judges could not be given their positions much earlier in life, 


MORE ABOUT THE LAW’S MAJESTY 183 


and be far better paid. In France, I think, the present pre- 
liminary examinations in criminal cases might be abolished, 
and the judges of the Supreme Court—the Cour de Cassation 
—made irremovable. In Germany I would give the people 
in some way a share in the selection of the magistrates, and 
I would pay the Judges on altogether a higher scale, both 
in the Lower and in the Supreme courts. In Scandinavian 
countries, generally, I would both appoint and retire the 
judges at an earlier age than is the case at present, and the 
pensions should be much more liberal. In Italy, I think 
that much of the legal procedure could be simplified, the 
courts made more easily open for the poorer people, and the 
judges more highly paid and chosen from a wider circle. In 
the United States I should like to see the present system of 
election greatly modified,and I think the Judges of the High 
Courts in every State should all be better paid. This latter 
remark applies also to the judges of the Supreme Court, who 
should be appointed on the understanding that they do not 
afterwards take up politics. In Australia and Canada the 
present system leaves little room for improvement in its 
suitability to the country concerned, though here, also, I 
am sure, it would be wise to pay larger salaries and 
especially to provide liberal pensions. 

I would have women magistrates, and, by and by, 
women judges, as well as women jurors, everywhere. I 
would also modify the legal procedure of all countries, 
including the United Kingdom, so that the County Court 
judges here and the judges who answer to them in other 
countries, should be empowered to deal with all matters 
(except certain reserved questions) where both parties agree 
that they should be so dealt with. A great deal of litigation 
is brought to the High Courts, with consequent expenditure 
of time and money, when it could be settled in the Lower. 
While I would not deprive a man of his right to go to the 
Higher Court, if he desires, I would give every encourage- 
ment to the parties to agree between themselves to accept 
the decision of a Lower. 

My experience of arbitrations is perhaps unfortunate— 
at any rate, in England. While the expense, as a rule, is 


184 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


(contrary to popular belief) as great or greater than in 
ordinary actions, the result is often equally unsatisfactory 
to both parties. As sure as ever there is a fairly fought-out 
arbitration, both sides will go away saying, ‘I wish I had 
had an action.’ No doubt this is much to be regretted, but 
there it is. 

With regard to the costliness of law proceedings I may 
not be competent to speak. The Army is in a singular 
position. We have been almost uniformly successful in our 
law cases, and therefore, generally, we have obtained our 
costs. Having regard to the hundreds of actions, small and 
great, which have been fought in different parts of the 
world, it has always seemed to me a matter for congratu- 
lation that success has so largely attended us—congratula- 
tion, I mean, not only to ourselves, but to our legal advisers 
in the different countries, and particularly to our London 
solicitors. Even when we have failed there have been 
compensations, as, for example, in one English Shelter case, 
when Lord Russell, to whom I have made some personal 
reference, decided against us. The Lord Chief spoke very 
warmly of our work on that occasion; in fact, he gave 
us a kind of testimonial of which we were able to make 
use. 

His decision, however, was not in our favour. We - 
contended that our Shelters and Homes for homeless men 
and women were not “common lodging-houses,’ one reason 
being that we did not wish to bring them under the common 
lodging-house regulations, because, for one thing, this 
rendered them liable to police inspection. In theory, the 
inspection was of the places only, but in practice it often 
included the inmates. We felt that these poor people, our 
clients, were as much entitled to the seclusion of the simple 
accommodation they could pay for as the aristocrat was 
entitled to the seclusion of the Hotel Metropole. ‘ Common 
lodging-houses’’ also were open to the visits of detectives 
looking for criminals. It is quite proper that detectives 
should look for criminals whenever they want them, but 
when they come to a private house to search for a criminal _ 
they must bring a warrant, whereas they need not bring 


MORE ABOUT THE LAW’S MAJESTY 185 


one into a ‘common lodging-house.’ There were other 
considerations, but we lost the case. 

Another famous Judge of the nineteenth century who was 
very good to us, and appreciated our work, was Mr. Justice 
Hawkins. He has a bad name, and yet he was a great man, 
who really took an interest in the reform of criminals. 
While I cannot join in all that has been said about Hawkins’s 
severity, I believe, nevertheless, that he did give on occasion 
what would now be called vindictive sentences. Sir Edward 
Clarke complains of his unfairness, and speaks of his ‘ career 
of public disservice.’ On the other hand, I have thought 
that Hawkins’s long sentences were in the nature of a 
rebound—hardly, perhaps, admitted to himself—from the 
absurd method of a long-continued course of short sentences. 
Our experience in dealing with criminals, which has been of 
some range, both in this and other countries, goes to show 
that nothing can be more ruinous and destructive of every 
hope of reform than the giving of a succession of short 
sentences. Some of those long and seemingly harsh sen- 
tences which Hawkins gave were in opposition to that prin- 
ciple. It had: been proved, say, in the case of a particular 
man that a series of short sentences was unavailing. ‘ Very 
well, then,’ said the judge, ‘ give him a long sentence, and 
keep him out of society.’ So far as Hawkins’s intellectual 
power and insight were concerned, I regarded him as a 
prince among the judges of his day, though no doubt he 
was a hard man. 

We have been very fortunate in the lawyers who have 
pleaded for us. I have made it my purpose to get the very 
best men I could find, and although they have often been 
matched against men of equal ability and weight on the 
other side, I have seldom had to admit that from the point 
of view of moral influence and stamina, the other side were 
better off than ours. In the United Kingdom especially 
the lawyers have fought for us with a skill and industry and 
courage which no fees could repay. The same or almost 
the same thing can be said of other countries—notably the 
United States and Australia, India and Germany. Among 
others I would name here Sir Henry Matthews (Lord 


186 ECHOES AND. MEMORIES 


Llandaff) ; Mr. R. Sutherst, one of our most valiant cham- 
pions, who went up and down the land on our behalf, and 
worked for the most paltry fees; Mr. Richardson, a 
solicitor and Common Councillor of the City of London ; 
Mr. Justice Duke, the President of the Probate, Divorce, 
and Admiralty Division; Mr. Vaughan Williams, later on 
a Judge of the High Court; Mr. Hughes, an eminent and 
respected K.C. on the Chancery side; Mr. Sargant, now a 
Lord Justice of Appeal, and many other well-known men. 
Our solicitors, Ranger, Burton & Frost, have also done 
splendid work. We have employed counsel of every shade 
of creed. Jessel, son of a late Master of the Rolls, was a 
Jew ; so is the late Lord Chief Justice (Lord Reading), who 
has worked for us. Russell was a Roman Catholic; so was 
Horne Payne. Sir Edward Clarke, Gully (later the Speaker), 
Jelf, and Greenwood, were strict Churchmen. Waddy was 
a Methodist, Cozens-Hardy a Congregationalist, Rigby and 
Willis were Baptists. 

In many of our cases of appeal on the common law side, 
especially in matters connected with our Open-Air work and 
meetings and questions of finance, and so forth, we often 
employed William Willis. He was a remarkable man, of a 
fervid temperament, and deeply and sincerely religious. We 
used to have prayer in his delightful chambers. He occa- 
sionally came to our Meetings, and always greatly rejoiced in 
the conflicts through which we passed, reckoning it one of the 
surest signs of the Divine Spirit working among our people 
that we were persecuted and hated. Without doubt he was 
one of the ‘ brightest ’ counsel who ever came into a court 
in my time. His mere advent seemed to make the lamps 
goup. The judges looked more expectant. A smile creased 
the most parchment-like faces of counsel. Even the solicitors 
began to enjoy themselves. Is this too bright a picture ? 
Well, certainly Willis’s great features were his sincerity, 
generosity, and an intense humanity. It is said that he 
lived in lodgings on circuit, instead of going to the swell 
hotels, and has been seen stopping on the way to the Law 
Courts to take hungry boys into a ‘tuck’ shop; and then 
run, so as not to be late for his case. 


MORE, ABOUT “IHE’EAWS=MAJESTY 187 


The only other man I remember who had at all a similar 
way with him was Danckwerts, one of the ablest members 
of the Bar. You never knew how Danckwerts was going 
to spring. He was most dangerous when he was most gentle. 
In my experience I never knew any man who could do 
so well with a bad case, a case which everybody knew was 
a bad case, and a case which—most wonderful of all—he 
himself knew was a bad case. I remember one occasion 
when Danckwerts appeared for the Crown against us. We 
had quashed a conviction by certain magistrates, but the 
question of costs remained over to be argued. Danckwerts 
made a speech in which he said that the Crown had no funds : 
how was it to pay the costs of the defeated magistrates ? 
Lord Chief Justice Coleridge was on the bench. He hada 
habit of appearing to sleep during the hearing of a case, his 
eyes closing and his head leaning forward. But when 
Danckwerts uttered the startling proposition that the Crown 
had no money, Coleridge instantly woke up from his apparent 
slumber. ‘ That is one of the most serious statements that 
could possibly be made,’ he said, ‘ by a gentleman repre- 
senting the Crown. If the Crown has no money, what is to 
happen to me?’ Coleridge’s ‘me’ echoed through the 
court, and remained for some years afterwards a classic 
allusion with us. Danckwerts simply replied, ‘As your 
lordship pleases’ (which caused more merriment) and then 
sat down. We got our costs. 

Another counsel whom I remember being nonplussed 
was E. H. Pember, of the Parliamentary Bar. Pember, 
whose conduct of our case, by the way, was perfect, was 
winding up a case before a Committee of the House of Lords 
with a most cogent appeal, but mumbling in the usual way. 
Once, during his hee-ing and haw-ing, he made a mistake, 
and one of his own juniors, sitting behind him, as they do 
in Parliamentary committees, corrected him. Pember 
seemed nettled. He stopped. ‘I do hate,’ he said testily, 
‘being corrected from behind.’ Whereupon somebody 
remarked in a stage whisper (which had the peculiar property 
of being heard everywhere), ‘ He is thinking of his boyhood 
days!’ 


188 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


Our Eastbourne Bill, on behalf of which he appeared, 
was one for the amending of a previous Act regulating the 
government of the town—a great centre of disturbance in 
the middle eighties. The police and authorities there had 
taken up a pronounced position against our work. One 
of the debates in the House of Commons was characterized 
by a rattling speech for us by Sir Henry James, afterwards 
Lord James of Hereford, who was standing legal adviser 
to the Devonshire family—the town was then largely 
Cavendish property. 

In criminal cases, cases that is in which we have been 
concerned for accused persons whom we have thought it 
right to have defended, I have come across most generous 
helpers. Among those should be mentioned the late Forrest 
Fulton, who became Recorder of the City of London, and 
Sir Charles Gill, who though receiving infinitesimal fees, 
have gone to immense labour for their unhappy clients, 
greatly to their clients’ advantage. Such circumstances 
have again and again showed me a kind of passion for 
justice working in the minds of men who to the outsider 
have often appeared in the garb of the partisan. 

Sometimes such Counsel have been young and at that 
time almost unknown men, but that has proved an advantage 
rather than otherwise. Judges often show consideration to 
a hitherto unknown man who is struggling with a difficult 
case simply from their desire to find and encourage ability. 
Thus the novice will get a sympathetic attention for points 
which a more seasoned man would hardly be expected to 
notice. 

We have not seldom known the best results follow an 
interview between the accused and the judge—with Counsel 
attending. The prisoner is often completely distracted when 
in the witness box, but makes an excellent impression when 
given an opportunity to explain himself in a quiet room. 

The difficulties in which we were involved at Eastbourne 
and Torquay introduced us to several notable men, among 
them Mr. Duke and Mr. Asquith. Both these men put their 
hearts into the different proceedings, and did us good service, 
although it was perfectly well known that the cases would 


MORE ABOUT THE LAW’S MAJESTY 189 


not be decided in our favour. Mr. Asquith! was then one of 
the men who go ‘special’; that is, only appear in other 
courts than their own for a ‘special’ extra fee of fifty 
guineas. Later he and Mr. Haldane (now Lord Haldane) 
and Mr. (now Lord Justice) Sargant advised us in the 
settlement of a deed of trust which was adopted at our 
International Council of 1904. This supplemented our deed 
of origin. Its main purpose was to provide machinery 
for removing a General who, on account of any one of 
certain definite causes, had forfeited his claim to the position, 
and for appointing a new General in a certain contingency. 
Mr. Asquith, Mr. Haldane, and Mr. Sargant took a deep 
personal interest in this matter. We had conference after 
conference, and I am afraid their fees were infinitesimal in 
comparison with the amount of work they put in. 

I liked Mr. Asquith. His directness and his alert mind 
were in delightful contrast with some lawyers I knew. He 
won my confidence quite early, partly because he really 
mastered his papers so that conferences became actual 
conferrings. In court he was a little too detached to please 
me, but on the other hand he could fight to the last ; and, 
in fact, he did sometimes win in the very last ditch. 

On one point, with regard to counsel’s fees, I have taken 
a very definite stand. It has always seemed to me that 
when counsel are unable to appear, and have to leave the 
case to somebody else, they should return their fees, or at 
least a reasonable portion of them. The only counsel from 
whom I have succeeded in obtaining the return of fees under 
such circumstances have been Mr. Finlay (afterwards Lord 
Chancellor), Sir Edward Clarke, and Mr. Clarke Hall, now 
a Metropolitan magistrate. I was sometimes told that it 
was contrary to the practice of the Bar. Nevertheless, I 
had a special satisfaction in the return of these fees. But, 
after all, the failure of counsel to appear has happened 
rarely in our affairs. 

I do not subscribe to the common jests at the expense of 
lawyers. I own to a partiality for the members of the legal 
profession. I generally understand them, and, even when 

1 Raised to the peerage in 1925 as Earl of Oxford and Asquith. 


Igo ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


we disagree, we do not fall out. Theirs is a fighting life, and 
so is mine. Their profession, no doubt, helps them to 
appreciate and recognize and acknowledge the rights of 
others. I dare say that we have afforded to the counsel 
whose clients we have been an almost inexhaustible reservoir 
of fun! Yet I think that they have lked us because of 
our frank, go-straight and go-ahead attitude. Lawyers 
have their emotions like other men. Once in a provincial 
city I had on my platform one of the present Lord Justices. 
After my lecture was over we had a quiet talk, and he told 
me that when he was a young man and briefs were few and 
far between, he occasionally went to hear my father and 
mother in the old Exeter Hall. Then he looked up at the 
ceiling and said, ‘ You know, the impression of those Meet- 
ings has never left me, and it has been reawakened this 
afternoon. If I had given myself to the impulse of those 
days perhaps my life might have accomplished more for 
God and my generation.’ 


XXII 
CONCERNING ‘ SACRAMENTS ’ 


ONE question of considerable difficulty for The Army in the 
early days was our attitude to what are called the Sacra- 
ments, especially the Supper. I do not think that any of 
us were much troubled about the baptismal question, 
although for some years we followed the practice of many 
Churches and baptized infants. I have in some cases myself 
“sprinkled ’ as many as thirty in one service! And, by the 
way, such services were made both interesting and useful. 
We had a simple and yet very definite formula whereby the 
parents engaged to give the children over to be the servants 
of God and to train them for Him. This practice, however, 
died down gradually, chiefly because it had no very strong 
conviction behind it ; and in place of it The Army intro- 
duced a service of Dedication which has become much 
valued among our people in many lands. 

The case with regard to the Supper was on a different 
plane altogether. Here, as in some other matters, the 
Founder’s early training in the Church of England and his 
later Church work influenced him. He was in some 
measure predisposed to attach importance to ceremonial 
of this nature, and while he never allowed that in itself 
it possessed any spiritual efficacy, or that it was in the 
least degree necessary to the Salvation of any man, yet he 
used it, though with increasing misgiving. 

When I came on the scene as a responsible official of the 
Mission, in 1874, the Lord’s Supper was administered 
monthly at all our stations to all members of the Mission 
and to such other Christian friends as were known to be 
in good standing and who desired to join with us. These 
services Were in many cases really impressive. There was 
a simplicity and naturalness about them which made them 


IgI 


1g2 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


very welcome, and whether the number partaking was a 
score, or whether—as on special occasions—it ran up to 
six or seven hundred, the gatherings were in many respects 
remarkable. There was a total absence of display, but 
wonderful freedom. The faith of many was strengthened, 
former promises and vows were recalled and renewed, and 
not seldom the unsaved or irreligious who had been allowed 
to come into the buildings as spectators were there and 
then brought to Christ. 

A sense of misgiving, however, arose, and made itself 
more evident with the growing work. I think that this 
misgiving was experienced first of all by Catherine Booth. 
She had a deep horror of anything which might tend to 
substitute in the minds of the people some outward act or 
compliance for the fruits of practical Holiness. Her know- 
ledge of the low tone of spiritual life in the Churches, gained 
as a result of her friendship with many religious people and 
their leaders, made her look with dread upon the possibility 
that our people, most of whom were very ignorant and 
simple, might come in time to lean upon some outward 
ceremonial instead of upon the work of the Holy Spirit as 
witnessed in a change of heart and life. 

To anticipate for a moment, it may be mentioned here 
that later on she came to know something of the evils which 
have followed from this misplaced confidence within the 
Churches on the continent of Europe, both Roman and 
Lutheran. This knowledge convinced her that tens of 
thousands of merely nominal Christians would wake up and 
really seek after God if it were not for the benumbing 
influence of sacramentalism.! 


1 Compare the late Bishop Jayne in his farewell letter to his Diocese : 
‘I am bound to point out that we are thwarted in all our attempts to 
promote the Kingdom by the sad and most mysterious fact that for 
centuries in East and West the Holy Communion has notoriously been 
the storm-centre of bitter controversy and division throughout Christen- 
dom. No truth of Christianity has undergone more strange perversions 
or has been more grievously deflected and distorted out of shape than the 
doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. If you wish to know how Christians can 
hate one another, you have only to read the later history of the Sacrament 
of our Saviour’s dying love. Jf you wish to know the lowest and grossest 
depth of superstition within the circle of the Christian Church, you have only 
to turn to the same history. Truly our Table has become a snare to us ; the 
marvel 1s that it has survived tts own corruptions.’ 


CONCERNING ‘SACRAMENTS’ 193 


The Founder approached the matter differently. He 
was essentially a utilitarian, particularly as related to ques- 
tions not necessary to Salvation. His first inquiry with 
regard to the adoption or abandonment of any measure was, 
“Will it help to our great end? If it will not help, will it 
hinder?’ And, little by little, he came to believe that 
there was danger in the continuance of this practice amongst 
us. Its chief danger, in his eyes, lay in its divisiveness. It 
involved many questions. To begin with, it was unthink- 
able that we should use fermented liquors. Many of our 
people, both men and women, were rescued drunkards, and 
already some of our Converts, who had been sent to the 
Churches, if they had not broken down immediately, had 
at least been placed in grievous temptation owing to the 
cup which they were offered. This may seem to be a minor 
question, but it was persistently troublesome. On the 
other hand, many of our people did not like the idea of 
‘ diluted jellies,’ and unfermented wine was then unknown, 
at any rate in this country; others, again, preferred that 
the element should be water. 

Then there arose the question whether the Evangelists 
alone should be the administrators. Great exception was 
taken in some quarters to administration by others, even by 
the principal local officials ; indeed, in some places the 
people absented themselves from the service unless ‘ the 
bread and wine’ were offered by ‘ the regular preachers.’ 

A further and more acute difficulty was that many of 
the Evangelists were women, as had been the case from the 
early years of the Mission, and the idea of women adminis- 
tering sacraments was at that time almost unthinkable to 
many good people, in spite of our stand, from the beginning, 
on the perfect equality of men and women in the Kingdom 
of Christ. 

Yet another divisive question arose when we had to 
decide who should partake of the sacrament, and who should 
be the local authority to give the decision? To pick and 
choose might only accentuate family and other divisions, 
and yet it was obvious that there must be some regulation 
and discrimination. 


oO 


194 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


These various controversies, slight as the matter of them 
may seem now, did result in the loss of valuable people to 
the Mission. We were led, therefore, to make a certain 
examination of the whole subject. Jailton, from the begin- 
ning, was in favour of abandoning all ceremonials which 
were prominently associated with the rest of the religious 
life of the world. He argued with great cogency that if, as 
we all admitted, participation in, for instance, the Supper 
was not necessary to Salvation, it became merely a question 
of its value, as one method of helping the people; and he 
claimed that the freedom which was purchased by Jesus 
Christ was a freedom from all that belonged to the old 
dispensation, including the whole ceremonial principle. My 
mother, although not feeling so strongly as Railton on the 
subject, at once grasped the seriousness of anything which 
might mislead or divide our simple people. 

For myself, I confess that I had so often received 
spiritual help—no doubt the result of my own faith—in the 
administration of the Supper, that it was with considerable 
hesitation, not to say reluctance, that I came round to the 
view which the Founder finally adopted. I believe that I 
was the last Officer of The Salvation Army to administer 
the Lord’s Supper to any of its people; and, indeed, the 
Founder gave me, young as I was, a freedom in this matter 
which, so far as J am aware, he gave to no one else, and 
which he gave to me on no other subject of importance on 
which our views were for the time out of accord. But 
gradually I, too, realized how prone the human mind is to 
lean upon the outward. 

I saw something at this time of the High Church party 
in the Church of England, and, though an outsider, I 
deplored, with some of the Church’s own best men, the 
tendency of that movement to a kind of materialism—the 
reliance, that is, upon outward and visible signs which so 
easily become substitutes for inward and spiritual grace. 
Finally, my mind completely concurred in the decision to 
which the Founder had come. 

If I were asked what view I take with regard to this 
ceremony, I think I should say that I see nothing in it of 


CONCERNING ‘SACRAMENTS’ 195 


any advantage except in so far as such advantage arises 
from the individual act of faith at the time of partaking, 
and I see no reason why that same faith should not turn 
every meal into a sacramental feast. The great blessing 
is not some kind of ceremonial eating and drinking which 
is the fruit of redemption—the great blessing is, must be, 
in the redemption itself. Only too often have I seen how 
“communion,’ and the material trappings which the 
Churches have associated with it, obscure the thought of a 
real redemption. Life does not come by a sacrament, nor 
is it maintained by a ‘sacramental substance,’ but by a 
Divine Person consciously revealed in us as a present 
redeeming, life-giving Saviour. 

Much is to be said for the Quaker standpoint. I think 
it is perhaps better set forth in Barclay’s ‘Apology for the 
True Christian Divinity ’ than in any other writing I know. 
A near approximation to the truth that it is solely faith in 
the communicant—not any force or virtue in the symbols 
—which is all in all, is found in Dean Alford’s Exposition 
of Matthew xxvi. in his Greek Testament. The truth of the 
matter as it appears to The Salvation Army is set forth in 
The Army’s ‘ Handbook of Doctrine.’ 

For some time a practice existed among our Corps of 


1 Paul to the Ephesians iv. 5, 6, sums up the hope and strength of the 
children of God in a very notable passage—a passage which has been 
received by the entire Church of Christ, in all periods of its history, as 
containing a remarkable summary of its whole practical relationship to 
God and His truth—‘ One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father 
of all who 1s above all, and through all and in you all. And the Apostle 
does not even mention a sacrament; his silence, when making so impor- 
tant a declaration, is infinitely suggestive. 

The claim of some of the Sacramentalists, that a watey baptism is here 
intended, is surely impossible to maintain. There were numerous baptisms 
or washings under the old dispensation. Is not the clear intention here to 
show that they are all superseded by the one which Jesus Christ came to 
bring in: ‘ He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with five’? Tf it 
be claimed that in Ephesians v. 26 ‘ water’ is again referred to, | would 
suggest that it cannot be water in the literal sense which is to cleanse 
the Church of Christ! The cleansing is to be in and ‘ by the Word’ 
actually there referred to. What word? Whose word? That Word of 
God received in faith which carries the real regenerating and cleansing 
power. : 


196 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


going to the parish churches to ‘communion.’ Here some 
of the clergy, fearing the opposition of their ‘ respectable’ 
parishioners, arranged that The Salvation Army visits 
should be in the night, and as one consequence large crowds 
generally attended. But after one or two such visits to 
their churches, certain clergymen—one, I think, at Bristol 
and another in a North London parish—took the oppor- 
tunity of publicly announcing their refusal to administer 
the communion to those who had not been ‘ confirmed ’ 
according to the Church of England system. As most of 
our people, though living godly lives, had not been con- 
firmed, nor, for that matter, their forbears either, the 
Founder saw that another line of division was. likely to 
develop. Thereupon he called off the whole matter, and 
said that we would have no more of it. From that time 
forward we had no more ‘sacraments,’ and very little more 
trouble on the subject, although any Soldier who declared a 
Serious conviction in the matter and desired to participate 
—and this is still the law amongst us—could receive a 
recommendation to go to some other body for the purpose of 
partaking. 

The subject of The Salvation Army and the sacraments 
was one upon which I had a long talk with Dr. Farrar, then 
Canon of Westminster, one of the most popular preachers 
and writers of his day. The Canon had in the early days 
_ denounced The Army in perhaps the most unqualified terms 
ever employed against us by any minister of Christ. He 
effectually blotted us out of recognized society! Years 
afterwards, however, at the inception of the ‘ Darkest Eng- 
land’ Scheme, when the Press both in the United King- 
dom, in the Australias, and the United States was largely 
antagonistic, Canon Farrar, to our glad astonishment, 
intervened, and preached a remarkable sermon in West- 
minster Abbey containing a most eloquent and appreciative 
reference to The Salvation Army, its Leader, and its Social — 
Work. This opened up communication between The Army 
and the Canon, and he came to examine some of our work, 
seeing for himself sights of unutterable misery and evi- 
dences of the effectiveness of what we were doing to relieve 


CONCERNING ‘SACRAMENTS’ 197 


it. This further impressed him, so that a week or two 
later he preached again—a sermon making even more truly 
sympathetic and eulogistic reference. He still proclaimed 
that, except on the great fundamental truths of Christianity, 
on which all Christians are agreed, he differed even more 
widely from The Army than many of his brethren. ‘ Never- 
theless,’ he added, ‘ two things I plainly see. The one, that 
God has not left them unblessed; another, that there is 
much which we might profitably learn from the methods 
which have enabled them to accomplish, in so short time, so 
great a work.’ 

Farrar was much abused as a consequence of his cham- 
pionship. I saw some of the remonstrance which found its 
way through his letter-box, and had a tenth of the allega- 
tions made against us been true, he would have been justified 
in withdrawing every word he had said in our favour. He 
showed a type of courage somewhat rare among his con- 
temporary ecclesiastics in that, despite this abuse, he yet 
stood out as the champion—at all events so far as the Church 
of England was concerned—of what was then still a new 
and relatively untried movement. 

On more than one occasion I talked with him on wider 
matters, and he made a great effort to persuade me to ask 
for the reintroduction amongst us of the Supper. Other 
Churchmen, notably Dr. Westcott (afterwards Bishop of 
Durham), had said that they approved of the stand we 
took in refusing the Supper, as this meant a refusal to 
embark upon what was, in their view, ‘a schismatic pro- 
cedure.’ Farrar, on the contrary, urged that it should be 
restored. He reasoned with me for more than an hour in 
one of our interviews, which, I remember, took place in a 
delightful room in his home in Dean’s Yard, probably his 
study, for we were surrounded by a wonderful gathering 
of books. He referred, with an intimacy which surprised 
me at the time, but which I understood better when I knew 
more of his life, to the Supper as having been a means of 
comforting and strengthening his own spirit. He believed 
that there was a revelation of the Divine Mind made to 
those who humbly and in faith partook of this sacrament, 





198 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


which was different from that forthcoming by other 
means.? 

I am bound to say that his arguments from Scripture, 
and from the practice of the earliest Christians, while they 
proved the range of his scholarship and his wonderful 
familiarity with some of those rows of silent books, failed 
entirely to influence me. As to the latter, he could not 
claim that the first Christian communities, of whom, by 
the way, he had made a special study, attached any im- 
portance to the matter at all, or that they had, so far as 
we know, even so much as given a mame to what have since 
come to be called ‘ The Sacraments ’ ! 

The absence—total and complete—of any recognized 
doctrine with regard to them, in those early days, is equally 
difficult to explain if they really are so important. It is 
also very significant that we have little or no evidence that 
any kind of proper instruction was given by the Apostles 
on the question. Paul’s references to it are but slight and 
not very clear. As to baptism he deliberately seeks to dis- 
associate himself from any mission or desire to baptize 
anybody !? 

But, more important, as our conversation proceeded, it 

1 But my impression is that he approved refusal, by his own Church, 


of those who had not been ‘ confirmed’ according to the customs of that 
Church. Farrar, like many splendid Churchmen, had a sectarian mind. 

2 Dean Farrar spoke chiefly of the (alleged) command of Jesus Christ. 
But the ‘command’ of our Lord, leaving aside for a moment the question 
of what He commanded, does not appear to have been any more definite 
and precise than the command with reference to the washing of feet 
(John xiii. 5~9), which immediately followed the Supper, and which no 
one now dreams of regarding as a ‘Sacrament’ or as binding on any one. 
And of the two ceremonials the latter was, in fact, something more urgent 
than the Supper. For while the Supper referred to the actual death once 
for all of Jesus Christ, already foreshadowed by the Jewish rite (now 
passing away) of the Passover, the foot-washing represented not only its 
own lesson of humility and brotherly love, but the daily need of cleansing 
at the hands of the Divine Master even after the new birth of the Spirit. 
Moreover, while the words of Jesus Christ at the Supper were at most a 
command about the observance of a ceremonial eating and drinking, the 
command of the feet-washing is enforced by the clear and solemn words, 
‘Ye ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, 
that ye should do as I have done to you,’ and ‘If I wash thee not, thou hast 
no part with Me.’ 


CONCERNING ‘SACRAMENTS’ 199 


became evident that Dr. Farrar could not and would not 
claim that this ‘Sacrament’ was in any sense necessary to 
Salvation—whether Salvation be viewed as a new beginning 
or as a life—and nothing that he could urge apart from that 
seemed to me to have any substantial weight. In fact, I 
remember saying to the Founder at the time that I thought 
I could have put the Canon’s case more effectively than he 
had put it himself.* 

But when he spoke of himself and the strengthening of 
faith which had come to his own soul through this service, 
I confess he did make an impression upon me. He was not 
a man who found it easy to show his feelings—the very 
breadth of his charity rather removed him from the sway of 
emotion—yet through this self-revelation of his we were 
drawn to one another. Those interviews made me reflect, 
as I have had to do with regard to other choice spirits, that 
if only he had been a Salvationist what a joy it would have 
been to work with him, and what a field we could have 
offered him, far greater than his own Church ever did. 
The Church of England never showed its lack of courage 
more conclusively than when it consigned Farrar to a 
Deanery (Canterbury) while it filled some of its bishoprics 
with feeble courtiers. 

So Dean Farrar was the only man who made any con- 
sidered effort to bring us back to a practice we had long 
discarded ; certainly the only man of any consequence 
either in the Church of England or among Nonconformists 
who said boldly, ‘ You ought to give the sacraments, even 
though there may be questions about the effectiveness of 
your agents.’ The Founder, however, stood his ground. 
No doubt we have lost friends by our attitude. Some would 
have joined us had they not been deterred by the line we 


1 Tn his ‘ Doctrine of the Church and Re-union,’ the Bishop of Gloucester 
(p. 90) says: ‘ It is clear that there was no historical tradition of any value 
concerning Apostolic ordinances in the Church. The Apostles and the 
Church of the Apostles’ days did in all things what the times demanded. 
They made rules for their own time, not for the future; and because the 
Church was a living organism, adapting itself to newer conditions, there- 
fore after generations modified and changed the customs which had come 
down to them, while still claiming to obey Apostolic injunctions.’ 


200 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


adopted. And yet I believe the line was wise. Of course, 
the whole situation is changed the moment the claim is 
made that the sacraments, especially the Supper, are in any 
way necessary to the salvation of the soul. In that case I 
can see consistency in the Roman and High Church position 
which prefers even the Mass to a mere memorialism and 
insists on their observance; but I have never been able to 
reconcile the view that there is nothing in them which is 
essential to saving faith, and that salvation is by faith, with 
the emphasis which is laid upon them both in the Lutheran 
and Anglican Churches. 


XXIII 


A BRUSH WITH HERBERT SPENCER 


In 1896 I had a brush with Herbert Spencer. I had long 
entertained misgivings with regard to his system of philo- 
sophy. On more than one occasion I had noticed the 
extraordinary inconsistencies which some of his work re- 
vealed. This was quite compatible with a certain detached 
intellectual enjoyment in the building of his logic and in 
the precision with which he could hit certain nails on the 
head. But I had never taken him very seriously, potent as 
was his name among a certain set in the latter part of the 
nineteenth century. 

The last volume of ‘ The Principles of Sociology ’ was 
published in 1896, and with it the ‘ Synthetic Philosophy ’ 
was complete. Congratulations poured in upon Spencer 
from many quarters, and the newspapers gave laudatory 
reviews. ‘ The Times,’ in a leading article on the subject, 
claimed for Spencer that from the inception of his system of 
philosophy up to that present time—a stretch of fifty years 
or so—his work had been marked by consistency. The 
word ‘ consistency ’ was a challenge to the critical reader. 
I laid no claim to be a philosopher myself. Even as a critic 
of Spencer I was not entirely original, for some of my 
objections to his methods had been suggested to me by others. 
But this extraordinary claim by his editorial admirer seemed 
at last to offer an opportunity to confront Herbert Spencer 
with—Herbert Spencer ! 

Accordingly I wrote a letter to ‘ The Times,’ which ap- 
peared in that journal on December 1, 1896. In this letter 
I took up the point made by the writer of the leading article 
that ‘many and multiform as have been Mr. Spencer’s 
Jabours since [the publication of his first work] all that he 


201 


202 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


has written has been consistent in every way with the views 
he then held and expressed.’ I pointed out that at least on 
one subject Mr. Spencer’s writings had not been consistent. 
In ‘ Social Statics,’ published in successive editions froin 
1850 to 1870, he wrote on ‘ The right to the use of the 
land,’ and declared that equity did not permit property 
in land: 


Equity does not permit property in land. For if one portion 
of the earth’s surface may justly become the possession of an 
individual, and may be held by him for his sole use and benefit, as 
a thing to which he has an exclusive right, then other portions of 
the earth’s surface may be so held, and eventually the whole of the 
earth’s surface may be so held. 

‘But time,’ say some, ‘is a great legalizer. Immemorial 
possession must be taken to constitute a legitimate claim.’ . . . To 
which proposition a willing assent shall be given when its pro- 
pounders can assign it a definite meaning. To do this, however, 
they must find satisfactory answers to such questions as, How long 
does it take for what was originally a wrong to grow into a right ? 
At what rate per annum do invalid claims become valid ? 


I showed that Mr. Spencer had found still further reason 
to deny the rectitude of property in land and had urged 
that ‘it can never be pretended that the existing titles to 
such property are legitimate.’ Further, some years later, in 
‘ Political Institutions,’ he had set forth the same position, 
along a different line of argument. 

But in 1891, in his ‘ Justice’—Part IV of ‘The 
Principles of Ethics’—there appeared the following 
remarkable confessions : 


When, in ‘ Social Statics,’ published in 1850, I drew from the 
law of equal freedom the corollary that the land could not equitably 
be alienated from the community, and argued that, after compensat- 
ing its existing holders, it should be re-appropriated by the com- 
munity, I overlooked the foregoing considerations. Moreover, I did 
not clearly see what would be implied by the giving of compensation 
for all that value which the labour of ages has given to the land. 
While . . . I adhere to the inference originally drawn that the 
aggregate of men forming the community are the supreme owners of 
the land—an inference harmonizing with legal doctrine and daily 
acted upon in legislation—a fuller consideration of the matter has 
led me to the conclusion that individual ownership, subject to State 
suzerainty, should be maintained. ... 


A BRUSH WITH HERBERT SPENCER — 203 


I added that it would seem that it did not take very 
long, after all, at any rate in the case of Mr. Spencer’s views, 
for what was originally a wrong to grow into a right. In 
a word of personal explanation—namely, that upon the 
particular subjects discussed (the right to the land) I 
expressed no opinion; I concluded my letter : 

And yet my interest in Mr. Spencer, and the contradictory 
position in which, as it seems to me, he finds himself, is not entirely 
academic. If in this, a matter of vital moment to society, his 
teaching is inconsistent with itself, is it not probable that on other 
and infinitely graver questions—questions of religious faith and 
Divine authority which make or mar men’s lives—on which he has 
spoken with similar assurance and with little regard to the teaching 
of revelation, he is equally unreliable ? I venture to think that 
he is. 

This letter was immediately followed by some protests 
from shocked Spencerians, but it was supported by Pro- 
fessor Thomas Case, then Waynflete Professor of Moral and 
Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, and now President of 
Corpus Christi College. Professor Case went further than I, 
and claimed that Spencer was inconsistent, not only in 
separated particulars, but in the whole basis of his philo- 
sophy. Spencer had said that no man could know the 
world beyond himself, and yet he claimed to assert certain 
things with regard to that world, as, for example, that it 
was resistant and persistent. The logic of this was either 
that Spencer was superhuman or that one or other of these 
assertions was ill-founded. ‘ The moment Mr. Spencer pre- 
sumes to say,’ wrote Professor Case, ‘ that it is something 
resistant and persistent, agnosticism is at an end.’ 

Within a few days I had occasion again to write to ‘ The 
Times’ in order to make it plain, as against the swords 
which flashed from their scabbards in Mr. Spencer’s defence, 
that I did not condemn him for a change of view or because 
he had ‘not gone on publishing what he thought to be 
untrue.” On the contrary, I admired his candour. [I also 
pointed out that his views on the land question were not the 
only instance of contradictions in his philosophic fabric. 
In ‘ Social Statics,’ for example, he had deduced from the 
will of God the law of equal freedom. That, indeed, was 


204 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 

the basis of his philosophic plan. Yet he had employed 
subsequently all the resources of his massive intellect in the 
effort to eliminate God from human life. In the one case 
he wrote that human happiness was the Divine will;* in 
the other he was at pains to deny that the possession of a 
Divine will could be affirmed at all if any definite meaning 
were to be attached to the word ‘will.’ I must not do 
injustice by paraphrasing a philosopher, and therefore the 
two quotations as they appeared in ‘ The Times’ shall be 


set out side by side: 


From ‘ Social Statics’ (1877), 
Chapter IV: 

Starting afresh, then, from the 
admitted truth, that human 
happiness is the Divine will, let 
us look at the means appointed 
for the obtainment of that 
happiness. . . 

Now if God wills man’s happi- 
ness, and man’s happiness can 
be obtained only by the exercise 
of his faculties, then God wills 
that man should exercise his 
faculties. . . . But as God wills 
man’s happiness, that line of 
conduct which produces un- 
happiness is contrary to His will. 
Therefore, the non-exercise of the 
faculties is contrary to His will. 
Either way, then, we find that 
the exercise of the faculties is 
God’s will and man’s duty... . 

From this conclusion there 
seems no possibility of escape. 
. . . God wills man’s happiness. 

The law of equal freedom, 
derived as it is, directly from 
the Divine will, is a higher 
authority than all other laws, 
and the creative purpose de- 
mands that everything shall be 
subordinated to it. 


From ‘ Principles of Sociology’ 
(1896), Vol. III, Chapter XVI: 

To believe in a Divine con- 
sciousness, men must refrain 
from thinking what is meant by 
consciousness—miust stop short 
with verbal propositions; and 
propositions which they are de- 
barred from rendering into 
thoughts will more and more fail 
to satisfy them. Of course like 
difficulties present themselves 
when the will of God is spoken 
of. So long as we refrain from 
giving a definite meaning to the 
word will, we may say that it is 
possessed by the Cause of all 
Things, as readily as we may say 
that love of approbation is 
possessed by a circle; but when 
from the words we pass to the 
thoughts they stand for, we find 
that we can no more unite in 
consciousness the terms of the. 
one proposition than we can 
those of the other. 


1" Social Statics,’ 1877, Chapter IV. 
** Principles of Sociology,’-1896, Vol. III, Chapter XVI. © 


A BRUSH WITH HERBERT SPENCER 205 


‘ The Divine idea,’ Mr. Spencer says at one time, ‘ is the 
happiness of man’; ‘ Divine consciousness,’ he says at 
another, ‘is practically unthinkable.’ ‘ The will of God is,’ 
he writes in one book, ‘ the law of equal freedom’; ‘ that 
God possesses a will at all,’ he writes in another, ‘can no 
more be affirmed than love of approbation is possessed by 
a circle!’ 

No one attempted any reply to this letter. But on 
December 17th Spencer himself wrote: 


To the Editor of ‘The Times.’ 

SIR,—Energy spent in controversy is generally wasted, and I 
have little left to waste; but it seems needful that I should say 
something to prevent spread of misapprehensions. 

If Mr. Bramwell Booth will refer to the current edition of ‘ Social 
Statics,’ published in 1892, he will fail to find the passages he quotes 
from the earlier edition, and will see that with the disappearance of 
them have disappeared the incongruities on which he comments. 
Further, if he will look at the preface he will perceive how it happened 
that those incongruities continued so long to be conspicuous. 

Thus the conflict of earlier and later beliefs which Mr. Booth 
insists upon was long ago publicly recognized by me. If after thirty 
years of lifeit was blameable not to see everything which forty more 
years of life enabled me to see, I must admit the blame. The 
inconsistencies emphasized are those between conclusions partially 
thought out and conclusions fully thought out. I believe search 
would enable Mr. Booth to trace other inconsistencies consequent 
on other changes of views. It would be strange if a writer on 
evolution contended that his own ideas were the only things that 
had undergone no evolution. 


I am, Sir, yours, etc., 
HERBERT SPENCER. 


It will be noticed that the philosopher left Professor 
Case’s more general accusation of inconsistency alone. An 
acknowledgment from me in the next day’s paper closed the 
correspondence so far as I was concerned : 


To the Editor of ‘ The Times.’ 


Sir,—I cordially acknowledge the frankness and courage of 
Mr. Herbert Spencer’s admissions in ‘The Times’ of to-day. I hope 
he will not feel it an impertinence on my part if I add that the 
admission of error, whether in practice or in theory, is in itself a 
mark, which we can all appreciate, of both a strong and noble 
character. 


206 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


The inconsistencies in his writings are, Mr. Spencer now argues, 
really evidences of the operation of the principle of evolution of 
which he has written so much. 

His ideas, in common with other things, ‘have undergone 
evolution.’ But the processes of evolution, as Mr. Spencer himself 
has taught us, are unending; and in making this singular admission 
he has allowed the main contention of my letters—that his ideas are 
changing ideas; that what they are to-day is no possible guide to 
what they may be to-morrow; that they are, in fact, transitory, 
uncertain, and unreliable. 

In this lax philosophy, it seems to me, there can be no security, 
especially on those supremely important matters of faith and morals 
by which men order their conduct and regulate their lives. 

Yours faithfully, 
W. BRAMWELL Bootu. 


The immediate object of the controversy was attained. 
‘The Times,’ which at first had said that all that Mr. Her- 
bert Spencer had written had been a tissue of consistency, 
had an article six weeks later saying: ‘ Inconsistencies, 
some of which he [Mr. Herbert Spencer] has endeavoured to 
eliminate, have been revealed. . . . In consequence of correc- 
tions or qualifications made from time to time, the prin- 
ciples of his system have become somewhat less definite 
than when first stated.’ 

My purpose was, of course, not merely to expose a single 
inconsistency, nor, for that matter, half a dozen. It was to 
reveal the absurdity of those who regarded Herbert Spencer’s 
tpse dixit as possessing a final authority which they would 
have been the last to concede to the testimony of revelation. 
It was no point of mine to complain that Spencer and Huxley 
and the others attacked Christianity. It was not for me to 
object if they entertained and published views opposed to 
the divine authority of the Bible. Much as I might deplore 
the bitterness and ridicule with which they assailed what 
I loved and revered, that was not the matter at i sue. 
What I did object to—what I regarded and still regard as 
fundamentally dishonest—was that they should put forward 
their views in such a form as to imply that they were final, 
when they knew quite well, as Spencer now confessed, that 
they were only fluid. Spencer’s views were introduced and 
were generally accepted by his followers as a sufficient 


A BRUSH WITH HERBERT SPENCER 207 


answer to the claims of revealed religion. Yet he regarded 
himself as possessing the right of subsequent revision, and 
in this correspondence suggested that he was rather sur- 
prised to find that that right was called in question! At 
one moment the agnostic philosophy was holding up to 
contempt the teaching of the Bible, the example of Christ, 
and to some extent the instinctive demands of conscience. 
And at another moment this same agnostic philosophy was 
declaring that nothing could be known! 

Perhaps in referring to eminent Victorian agnostics I 
ought to distinguish Darwin from the rest. Darwin’s theory 
did not necessarily involve abandonment of the whole 
teaching of the Bible, although towards the end of his life 
he did disclaim belief in any revelation. Writing in 1879 to 
a student at Jena, he said, ‘ As far as I am concerned I do 
not believe that any revelation has ever been made. With 
regard to a future life every one must draw his own con- 
clusions from vague and contradictory probabilities.’ All 
the same I think that the author of ‘ The Origin of Species ’ 
shared with Calvin in another sphere the misfortune of 
having nominal disciples who first distorted their master’s 
views, and then expanded their distortions until those views 
themselves were all but lost in the absurdities of the disciples’ 
- own creation. 

Even though Spencer’s name to-day casts nothing lke 
the spell it exercised a quarter of a century ago, the episode 
is not without its present interest. It shows us the inter- 
esting spectacle of a philosopher raising the smoke-cloud of 
evolution and trying to escape under its cover. How could 
we be sure, when Herbert Spencer deduced the materialistic 
explanation of all phenomena, that even he himself had 
said the last word on the subject, let alone those who came 
after him? Evolution does not stop even when ‘ conclu- 
sions partially thought out’ become ‘conclusions fully 
thought out.’ Where are you to put a finger on the evolu- 
tionary process and say, ‘ This is settled ; that other is still 
to be determined’? If Spencer had lived, his “conclusions 
fully thought out’ would no doubt have been subject to 
further evolution—they might, in fact, have come round to 


208 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


—well, to mine, and have clothed him at last in a red 
guernsey | | 
The matter is much more serious than a mere illustration 
of the fallibility of great minds. Faith and spiritual life 
are at stake. When the philosopher puts forward conclu- 
sions, stamped to all appearance with the seal of ultimate 
wisdom, faith is often wrecked. And however candid may 
be the philosopher’s later admissions that he has changed 
his views, that his own ideas have shared in the evolution 
he has been propounding, it will not mend the mischief. 
Not even a new edition will do that. If such conclusions 
were marked at every stage, ‘ Subject to revision—to after- 
thought—to fresh discovery,’ it would be different. But 
they are not. They are as pontifical as any decree of the 
Vatican! There is nothing to equal the accent of authority 
with which they are announced! And yet when all is said 
and done they are in reality but ‘ questionable guessing.’ 


XALV 
PURELY PERSONAL 


EVERY man, I suppose, has notable moments in his personal 
spiritual life—not at all identical with notable moments of 
his earthly career. A number of such occasions stand out 
for me with remarkable vividness. Among them have been 
some associated with an outward scene or incident—quite 
apart from public affairs or services—which in some way 
brought a new awe upon the soul. The first in point of 
time was, I think, connected with a visit which I paid to 
Tintern Abbey when I was but a boy of thirteen or fourteen. 
It seemed as though there was something in those wonderful 
ruins by the winding Wye which suddenly became vocal to 
me and something in me which spoke back again. I hada 
similar feeling, years afterwards, when in Rome I visited 
the Colosseum. This time it came as a deep sense of the 
inner spiritual conflicts through which the martyrs must 
have passed. So realit was that I seemed able to apprehend 
a little of what must have been experienced in those far-off 
days on the very stones on which we knelt, I and the two 
men who were with me. I felt a mysterious liberation, an 
enlargement, a mounting up—what shall I call it?—of the 
spirit within. 

It was not the mere passing impression of the traveller. 
Little else in Rome, at any rate during that visit, affected 
me in anything like the same way, except, perhaps, the 
Corso, the street through which many of the martyrs passed 
amid hostile multitudes to their condemnation and death. 
Certainly I found that some of the basilicas appealed greatly 
to the eye, but I cannot say that they touched me very 
deeply. The pictures in the Vatican galleries were wonder- 
ful, though in some cases I thought them overdone. The 





P 209 


210 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


tapestries in the Sistine Chapel stirred me in some degree ; 
but very slightly as compared with a little scene that I 
witnessed in a side chapel in, I believe it was, 5. Maria 
Maggiore. The priest, a minor canon, had just concluded a 
service, when an old woman, bent with age and, I should 
think, with trouble, came in his path and bent herself yet 
more to receive his blessing! He put out two fingers, 
mumbled a word or two, and passed on. Here was a poor 
hungry creature, type of a stricken humanity, looking up 
with a wistfulness no one could mistake. And there was 
the smooth priest in his elaborate vestments, bestowing his 
perfunctory benison! It-struck home to my heart ! 

The same transfiguring influence which I had experi- 
enced in the old English Abbey and in the Roman amphi- 
theatre came upon me again on a journey from New York. 
How mighty the ocean and how passing small the ship! 
And from that a sense of how helpless and yet how secure 
the human spirit on a Mighty Bosom. We had a good 
passage, the water was comparatively quiet, and I, a bad 
sailor, was able to look about a little. The sense of distance, 
of solitariness, of being at the mercy of the purely physical, 
a new perspective of oneself and of the world, of the visible 
and the invisible, made it one of those moments when again 
something inward seemed to rise up and take wing. 

Yet I have been scarcely affected by some of the things 
which are supposed to appeal, and indeed do appeal, to the 
traveller. Niagara did not make any very great impression 
upon me, though I admired the rainbows, of which I saw a 
gay succession in a few minutes. When the sun is in a 
certain direction the humidity of the atmosphere caused by 
the waterfalls makes the most beautiful iridescence, one 
rainbow embracing another. Even the Alps did not arouse 
in me the feeling that they do in many. The people who 
were with me on my first visit thought me unresponsive, 
although, there in the Alps, I had something of the same 
sense as later I had on the Atlantic, at once of helplessness 
and security, of coming to one’s own limits and finding 
beyond them—God ! 

During’a large part of my life many of the laws and facts 


PURELY PERSONAL 211 


of nature have seemed to me, though not alive, to have in 
them a spirit of life, separate from them, but working in 
them. 

The Lord of all, Himself through all diffused, 

Sustains and is the life of all that lives. 

. one spirit, His 
Who wore the plaited thorns with bleeding brows, 
Rules universal nature. 


But I have felt more than this. The universe itself, as one 
of our poets has it, has murmured to the ear of love and 
faith tidings of invisible things, secrets from the everlasting 
Silence. These have seemed like the echo of the voice of 
God. They have been more than illustrations of something 
higher than themselves, more than mere analogy. They 
have been more than the thoughts which Pope’s fine lines 
envision for us, though he does take care to separate the 
work from the Great Worker. 


All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body Nature is and God the soul ; 

That changed through all, and yet in all the same ; 
Great in the earth, as in th’ ethereal frame ; 
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 

Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, 
Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
Spreads undivided, operates unspent ; 

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part ; 
As full as perfect in vile man that mourns 

As the rapt seraph, that adores and burns. 

To Him, no high, no low, no great, no small— 
He fills, he bounds, unites and equals all. 


I have felt, indeed, that I could go further even than the 
Psalmist, when he said, ‘ Marvellous are Thy works; and 
that my soul knoweth right well,’ for they have been more 
to me than manifestations of divine power, or divine order, 
or divine beauty. It 1s as though at times they have given to 
me something living, which He had given them that they might 
communicate to me. It has been as though He was not only 
outside His own creation as a builder is outside the house 
he builds or the artist is outside the picture he paints, but 


gto ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


there within it all, a living personal power, an inspiring and 
communicating Spirit ; as though there was something of 
His abiding word in the trees and flowers, in the rocks and 
seas, a spirit in the hills and vales which could call to me 
and which my own spirit, starting up at that call, was able 
to answer. This has helped me to keep my heart in patience, 
in faith and hope. It has strengthened my hold on the 
secret of the Lord. It has deepened my knowledge that I 
live and move within the victorious purpose of God’s will. 

The contemplation of extremes of human misery affects 
me somewhat in the same way. I believe that our religion 
does enable us to account for much that is extremely baffling 
in human history and in the conditions of human life. One 
problem there is, however, in the presence of which I always 
feel dumb. It is the problem of suffering children. I cannot 
grasp anything tangible in the Divine purpose which per- 
mits little children to suffer. I cannot doubt His love. I 
know that wisdom belongeth unto Him. All the same, I 
feel, not merely pain, but a sense of profound mystery when 
I approach the suffering of children. I hear above the voice 
of the crippled and starved another voice which stirs me. 
I am in the presence of the insoluble. I realize this in con- 
nexion with those states of misery of the innocent and 
helpless, as I do not realize it even in experiences which 
might be thought more solemn, such as the presence of 
death or of widespread calamity. 

My experience from time to time in prayer has also made 
me conscious of the new life unexpectedly emerging within 
the life Iam living. It isin such moments as though I come 
to a rift in the great wall of circumstance and look out upon 
a free and boundless sea. In my early life my experience of 
prayer was, to a large extent, bound up with the fight 
against temptation, and I cannot say that in those early 
years, apart from prayer for those I loved, and for pressing 
needs, that I prayed with very deep desire or real under- 
standing for anything except deliverance in temptation or 
trial of one kind or another. 

But there stand out in my life now various occasions 
_ when, in praying for help for myself or for the souls of men, 


PUREAY eR RSONAT 213 


there has been this same deep consciousness of something 
new added to me, some awakening of a new spiritual faculty, 
or, shall I say, a new spiritual sense, with which to realize 
the Divine. I have had many remarkable answers to prayer 
in the way of material gifts and signs and leadings. Those, 
however, appear quite small in retrospect, so far as their 
permanent value is concerned, compared with these inward 
uprisings of my spirit—which have often had little or nothing 
to do with requests for any particular thing—to meet, I 
humbly believe, to know and to meet the Spirit of God. 

Another, and in a way kindred, experience in succeeding 
visitations I have had, which though difficult to write of, 
may be of service to some. Will it be understood if I put 
itin this way? Through a great part of my life I have felt 
a reverent sympathy with God. I passed through a deeply 
harrowing period of perplexity over the question of punish- 
ment and the relation of the Father to the whole matter of 
retribution. I have never been a ‘treacle and water ’ 
person. I have always felt that there must be some moral 
test supreme over men, and that it must be the one laid 
down by Jesus Christ : ‘ By their fruits ye shall know them.’ 
I have always felt that the love of God must be a holy love. 
I have always felt that the love of God must have an 
exclusive, as well as an inclusive, character. Nevertheless, 
when, while relatively a young man, I was confronted with 
the arguments of a certain school, I was brought up very 
short on the question. I had great strivings over it. My 
dear father and General helped me greatly, although he 
never pushed me. He was infinitely patient. And I came 
through. 

But it was in that stress of mind and soul that I began 
to feel a humble reverent sympathy with my God in the 
unmeasured responsibility and difficulty that were His of 
administering justice in a rebel world—responsibility and 
difficulty made greater just in proportion as He understood 
and loved that world and as that world misunderstood and 
hated Him. I knew that He was bound by the laws of His 
own nature—that His Omnipotence is a rational omni- 
potence. I knew that He could not contradict Himself. I 


214 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


knew, for example, that He could no more make a lie into 
a truth than I—the nature of things being what it is—could 
make two and two into five. A he being a lie, I knew that 
the punishment of the liar is the inherent inevitable conse- 
quence of the lie. And so it has seemed to me that love for 
God involved such true sympathy with Him as His child 
could feel in the tremendous task that is His of vindicating 
amid a world smitten by the inevitable consequences of sin, 
the mercy and the justice which are the support of His 
throne. 

This sympathy has been a conscious reality in my inner 
life and has helped me all-along my way. It has opened 
to me new views of the Divine Mind and Will. It has led 
me to the mastery of other emotions of my nature, so that 
they also could be used to glorify God. It has carried me 
through many dark hours of misgiving and weakness. It 
has strengthened my faith for the ultimate triumph of good. 
It has inspired me to work for my God. It has helped me 
also to do many things required in that work which have 
been painful to a more or less sensitive nature. I have felt 
that in doing that which was just and right towards others 
when it was so very painful for me, as well as for them, 
I, one of His servants, was tasting with the great Father 
and Saviour, of the cup that He must drink in contem- 
plating and judging a rebel and ruined world. 

In all these experiences, and above and beyond them all, 
there has been the ‘ spiritual awakening of spiritual wants,’ 
and the union—the beginning of the union of the drop with 
the Everlasting Ocean. 


XX V 
CORONATIONS 


SHORTLY after the announcement of the Coronation of 
King Edward we received an intimation from the Earl 
Marshal, the Duke of Norfolk, that the King had commanded 
that a representative of The Salvation Army should be in- 
vited to attend the solemnity in Westminster Abbey. The 
Founder appointed me for this duty. I received in due 
course a very handsome invitation card and the usual 
instructions giving particulars of the hour at which I was to 
be in my place. I found that I was expected to wear 
Court dress. After thinking over the matter I came to the 
conclusion that if I was present at all it must be as an 
Officer of The Salvation Army, in The Army uniform. 
Accordingly I wrote to the Earl Marshal requesting his 
authority for this alteration. His Grace, though with 
courtesy and respect, replied that he found himself unable 
to allow our uniform to be worn at so important a State 
function. I explained that the uniform was much more to 
us than a badge of office or rank; that it represented the 
great principles for which we were contending, and that 
it was rich in many sacred associations for those who wore 
it. I added that I did not feel at liberty to lay it aside 
even though I might be deprived of the honour of repre- 
senting The Army at the Coronation. The decision, how- 
ever, appeared to be inalterable. Court dress was de rigueur. 
Then I determined to write to the King, and indeed was in 
the act of doing so when the announcement was made that 
owing to his illness the Coronation had been postponed. 

As soon as the date of the service was again fixed, 
and the King was reported to be sufficiently improved in 
health to come back to London, I wrote to His Majesty, 


215 


216 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


August 5, 1902, and sent my letter to Cowes by special 
messenger, to the following effect : 


Having been honoured by an invitation to be present at 
the solemnity of His Majesty’s Coronation as a representa- 
tive of The Salvation Army, I asked the King to give me 
‘his gracious permission to attend in the uniform of my 
rank as a Salvation Army Officer.’ I continued : 

I feel it could not be in harmony with Your Majesty’s wish that 
I should lay aside our uniform at a moment when I am called to 
represent our people on an occasion of such widespread interest 
among them in every part of the Empire. 

It is only because I have been informed by the Earl Marshal that 
he has no power to give me the permission I desire that I have 
ventured to address you on the subject. 

Among all the peoples who are rejoicing on account of your 
recovery none are more truly grateful to God for His great goodness 


to Your Majesty and to the Queen than are we of The Salvation 
Army. 


On the following morning I received a telegram from 
Lord Knollys, finally disposing of the matter in the most 
kind and satisfactory way : 

I am commanded by the King to say that he has much pleasure 
in giving you permission to attend the Coronation in the uniform 


of your rank as a Salvation Army Officer. His Majesty thanks you 
for your kind congratulations. KNOLLYS. 


That ended the episode. Everybody had acted with 
perfect correctness: the Earl Marshal in insisting on the 
usual etiquette, I in claiming privilege for The Army uniform, 
and the King in exercising his prerogative. Thus for the 
first time in history, on a great State occasion, admission was 
found for the simple Salvationist uniform amid the astonish- 
ing splendour of velvet and lace, plumage and jewellery, 
priestly vestments and knightly armour. So far from any 
one at the Abbey appearing to object to our uniform, I 
think that most, if not all, of those who saw it in their midst 
felt that the King had done the right thing in the right way. 
The officials who were looking after the King’s guests showed 
it every mark of respect and consideration, as did those of 
the guests themselves with whom I came in contact. This 


CORONATIONS 217 


act of the King commanded attention all over the Empire, 
and even in some other countries, and we have never had 
this kind of difficulty again, either as regards our men or 
our women. It was a royal gesture which had behind it 
something of greater significance than a mere concession to 
Army practice or the good-nature of a King who was not 
over-concerned for the minutiae of ceremonial. 

The Coronation service throughout was calculated to 
stir the imagination and touch the heart. It had deep inward 
meanings as well as outward magnificence. It embodied, 
of course, certain dreary forms and precedents which had 
largely lost their value in this gentler age. Some people, 
no doubt, objected to the ecclesiastical order of the ser- 
vice, and declared much of it to be vain repetition. Yet, 
on the whole, it was a service with warm devotional elements 
and continual appeal to the best in King and people. It 
was a recognition of the rights and duties of each towards 
the other, and an open acknowledgment that neither the 
Throne nor its lieges could properly exercise those rights or 
discharge those duties without the strength of God. Dull 
indeed must have been the mind and cold the heart that 
was not impressed. 

I shall not be misunderstood when I say that much in 
this service reminded me of a Salvation Army Meeting. 
Here was what the general body of the British people 
regarded as a supreme expression of national faith and 
consecration, yet it contained many things which we in 
The Army have loved and fought for amid much criticism 
and abuse. To begin with, there were processions, with 
banners, from the doors of the Abbey to the altar steps. 
There were uniforms, the great crimson robe of State which 
was worn by the King, and the gowns and trappings of his 
distinguished subjects and of the foreign Ambassadors, all 
of them betokening some rank, some office, some authority, 
some privilege, some association, some conquest. There 
were the responses of the congregation to the prayers offered 
by the prelates, and the unrestrained acclamations, whose 
fervour and exuberance almost recalled our loudest Halle- 
lujahs. There was the reading of moving passages of 


218 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


Scripture which brought the distant past into sharp relation 
with the present. There was the note through it all of glory 
to God and of abounding joy, as when the choir, assisted 
by trumpeters and trombone players, sang to the noble 
tune ‘ Ein feste Burg’: 
Rejoice to-day with one accord, 
Sing out with exultation ; 


Rejoice and praise our mighty Lord, 
Whose arm hath brought Salvation. 


The words ‘ Salvation,’ ‘ Lamb,’ ‘ Blood,’ ‘ Fire,’ were 
not eschewed. The walls of the Abbey rang to what might 
have been sung in any of our Holiness gatherings : 

Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, 
And ’lighten with Celestial Fire : 
Thou the Anointing Spirit art, 

Who dost the sevenfold gifts impart : 
Thy blessed unction from above, 

Is comfort, life, and fire, and love. 


Finally, the King not only had a crown placed on his head, 
but he was also girt with a sword. ‘ With this sword,’ said 
the Archbishop, ‘.. . faithfully serve our Lord Jesus Christ 
in this life.’ 

The possibility occurred to me that the Church of 
England had taken some lessons from The SalvationArmy, 
while hesitating to acknowledge the source! The adoption 
of brass instruments by The Army, from the time when 
Leedham}! first blew his cornet in our Halls, offended many 
good people as a sin against reverence and decorum. Yet 
here were brass instruments in the Abbey on this most 
solemn of occasions; and drums, too, powerful drums, 
which accompanied nearly all the singing. I was told—I 
do not know whether it was true—that drums had never 
been heard in the Abbey before. The band consisted of 
seventy-five players (including ten fanfare trumpeters, 
resplendent in habiliments of gold), and at one or two parts 
of the service the band played sacred music without the 
accompaniment of voices. 

Then if one looked beyond the immediate circumstance 


1 See Chapter VI. 


CORONATIONS 219 


and setting, the service was such as to appeal even more 
to the Salvationist heart and soul. Here was a profession 
of humble submission to the King of kings. When Edward 
the Seventh rose from his chair and knelt down before the 
vast concourse, he made, by an outward act as to which 
there could be no uncertainty, his admission that God had 
the supreme claim upon his life and service. He swore in 
the hearing of us all, not only to be faithful to the realm, 
but to maintain the laws of God. From beginning to end 
there was an open avowal that God was the true foundation 
of life and the real source of power, that by Him kings 
reign and princes decree justice. It was not enough 
inwardly to acknowledge and resolve; he did it outwardly 
before as many as could be gathered together. And that 
led me to feel that surely this recognition of God on the 
part of the highest in the realm ought to make us in our 
humbler walks more than ever daring in declaring ourselves 
the servants of our Loid. From my place in the Abbey, 
the pride or unbelief which refused to acknowledge Him 
seemed more than ever contemptible. The King never 
looked more manly than when he knelt down while the 
Archbishop prayed for him that God would pour upon his 
head and heart the blessing of the Holy Ghost, and make 
him at last a partaker of the Eternal Kingdom through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Then if one looked away from that central space, and 
surveyed the distinguished throng to right and left, one had 
a fresh sense of the impressiveness of the occasion. Hither 
men had gathered from every clime. They were there from 
every continent and from the islands of the sea. They 
represented every province, even every outpost, of the 
Empire. There were Ambassadors from every nation. 
What moving thoughts the scene inspired! What multi- 
tudes beyond multitudes, of every colour and tongue, it 
called to mind! Here were gathered the kingdoms of this 
world and the glory of them! Yet what were they all— 
what was the proud Empire whose Monarch was the central 
figure in this scene—but a range of sandhills, to be washed 
away by the relentless waves of time ? And over against it 


220 ~ ECHOES AND MEMORIES 


all, the wondrous thing to which the whole service was a 
continual approach, was an everlasting Kingdom, a Kingdom 
of Salvation, a Kingdom without end. 

At King George’s Coronation I was not so well placed. 
I neither heard nor saw so much. But the scene was again 
one of great beauty and splendour, and it was illuminated, 
as the former occasion had not been, by sunlight, though 
this came and went in fitful spells. The picture was one of 
life and colour as before, and some of the music was very 
moving, though to a less degree, I think, than at the 
Coronation of King Edward. The sermon by the Arch- 
bishop of York had the brevity which has characterized the 
last three or four Coronation sermons, in distinction from 
the extreme length of those sermons in the olden time. It 
was on the sovereignty of service, and in speaking of the 
King’s work for the people and the Queen’s influence in 
the home, the Archbishop came near to many hearts. The 
Prince of Wales met with a very warm greeting, as did all 
the members of the Royal Family. The King and Queen 
themselves, as they passed out, robed and crowned, in that 
great final procession, created such a sense of awe as perhaps 
checked the acclamations of many. And in this case there 
was not the great pathos of the former occasion when we 
had greeted a king but lately come back to us from the 
very gates of death. 

Once again the prayers offered for the King found a 
deep response in the Salvationist heart. ‘ Strengthen him, 
O Lord, with the Holy Ghost the Comforter. Confirm and 
establish him with Thy free Spirit... and fill him, O Lord, 
with the spirit of Thy holy fear, now and for ever’; also 
the prayer immediately preceding the crowning: ‘O God, 
the Crown of the faithful . . . as Thou dost this day set a 
crown of pure gold on his head, so enrich his heart with 
Thine abundant grace, and crown him with princely virtues, 
through the King Eternal, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.’ 


INDEX 


A 

Age of Consent, 120. 
Aitken, Rev. Robert, 52. 
Alverstone, Lord, 115, 176. 
Andrews, V.C., Lieut. - Colonel 

Harry, 159. 
Armistead, Lord, 140. 
Armitage, Mr. and Mrs., 110. 
Armstrong, Eliza, 115, 131, 178. 
Asquith, Lord, 135, 136, 188, 189. 


B 


Band, First S.A.; 153. 
Begbie, Harold, 9, 17, 49. 
Benson, Archbishop, 59, 61, 62, 63, 

63769, 71. 

Besant, Sir Walter, 149, 151. 

Billups, Mr. and Mrs., 52, 89, 90, 
OI, 92, 93, 110. 

Blackwood, Stevenson, 109. 

Boer War, The, 149. 

Booth, Catherine, 5, 35, 42, 44, 162, 

163, 165, I92. 

Booth, Mrs. Bramwell, 117, 118, 

120. 

Booth, Miss Eva, 171. 
Booth, William, 

and the homeless, I. 

and his Chief of the Staff, 9. 

methods in conference, 13. 

and his Councils with Officers, 14 

on the platform, 18. 

as a preacher, 21. 

first styled ‘ General,’ 47. 

a manager of men, 79. 
Booth-Tucker, Commissioner, 158. 
Boyd-Carpenter, Bishop, 72. 
Bright, John, 133, 134. 

Butler, Bishop, 139. 
Butler, Mrs. Josephine, 118, 121, 
el Be eo 


C 


Cadman, Commissioner, I00, 
Cairns, Earl, 179, 180. 

Carleton, Commissioner, I14. 

Cecil, Lord Robert (see Salisbury), 


134. 
Children’s Act, 1908, 176. 


221 


Christian Mission, 117, 173. 

Church of England, 59, 72. 

Church, Dean, 73, 139. 

Clarke, Sir Edward, 175, 185, 189. 

Clifford, Dr. John, 4o. 

Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice, 187. 

Combe, Elizabeth, 115, 129. 

‘Contemporary Review,’ 77. 

Coronations, 215. 

Cory, John 253137, Tro; 

Cory, Richard, 110. 

Cottrill, Mrs., First S.A. Rescue 
Worker, 117. 

Cozens-Hardy, Lord Justice, 174, 
186, 

Criminal Law Amendment Act, 117, 
125) 

Crossley, Frank, IIo. 

Currie, Sir Donald, 140. 


D* 
Dankwerts, Mr., 187. 
Darkest England Scheme, 141, 177, 
196. 
Darwin, Charles, 207. 
Davidson, Archbishop, 60, 61, 63, 


68, 72. 
Deed Poll of Salvation Army, 173, 
174. 
Denney, James, D.D., 36. 
Denny, T. A., 104, 105, 109. 
Doctrine, S.A. Handbook of, 195. 
Duke, Mr. Henry, 186, 188. 


E 
Eagle Tavern, London, 7!, 175. 
Eastbourne Biil, The, 188. 
East End Mission, 45. 
Edward VII, His Majesty, 215, 219. 
Ely, Marchioness of, 131. 


F 
Familiar Spirits, 146. 
Farrar, Archdeacon, 38, 196, 199. 
Female Ministry and the Church, 
165. 
Financial Guarantee Committee, 
109. 


222 


Finlay, Lord, 189. 
Fisher, Lord, 145. 
Fowler, Miss Ann, 37. 
Freeman, Mrs., IIo. 
Frost, Mr. William, 178. 
Fulton, Sir Forrest, 188. 


G 
Gasparin, La Compasse, 27. 
George V, His Majesty, 220. 
Germany and The Salvation Army, 
25, 181. 
‘ Gift of Tongues,’ 57. 
Gill, Sir Charles, 188. 
Gladstone, Wm. E., 5, 133, 136, 137, 
139, 140. 
Gladstone, Mrs. W. E., 138. 
Gloucester, Bishop of, 199. 
Grecian Theatre, London, 71, 175. 
Gully, Mr., 186. 


H 


Hadleigh Land and _ Industrial 
Colony, I11. 

Haldane, Lord, 189. 

Hall, Mr. Clarke, 189. 

Harcourt, Sir William, 120, 123. 

Harcourt, Vernon, 28. 

Hawkins, Mr. Justice, 185. 

Hehir, Major-General Sir Patrick, 
159. 

Herring, George, 110, 111, I12. 

Hicks-Beach, Sir Michael, 123. 

Hole, Dean, 38. 

House of Convocation, 59. 

Howells, Canon, 52. 

Huxley, Professor, 27. 


J 
* Jacques, Sampson,’ I15, 116. 
James, Lord, of Hereford, 188. 
Jarrett, Rebecca, 115, 121, 126. 


K 
Knollys, Lord, 216. 


L 


Labouchere, Henry, 112, 113. 

Legal affairs at home and abroad, 
181. 

Liddon, Canon, 73, 74. 

Lightfoot, Bishop, 38, 60, 61, 62, 
64, 65, 73. 

Lindley, Nathaniel, 175. 

Llandaff, Viscount, 116, 186. 

Loch, Lord, 156, 151. 

‘London Gazette,’ 159. 


INDEX 


Lopes, Mr. Justice, 115, 128, 130. 
Ludlow, Lord, 115. 


M 

MacArthur, Sir William, 37, 105. 
MacLaren, Ian, 30. 
Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, 

WN ees Lane hae 
Manning, Cardinal, 76, 78. 
Matthews, Sir Charles, 116. 
Methodism and Woman, 162. 
Methodist New Connexion, 42. 
Mile End Waste (London), 43, 166. 
Moorhouse, Bishop, 38. 
Morley, Lord, 5, 141. 
Morley, Samuel, I10. 
Mourez, Madame, 115, 116, 126. 


N 
North, Mr. Justice, 176. 


O 
Oxford, Lord, 135, 188, 189. 


P 

‘Pall Mall Gazette,’ 115, 121, 122, 
123/227) 3442 

Palmer, Dr. and Mrs., 42. 

Parker, Dr. Joseph, 35. 

Pennefather, William, 38. 

Poland, Sir Harry, 115. 

Presbyterian attitude towards Sal- 
vationists, 26. 

Prisoners, The Army and, 153. 

Procuration Work, 118. 

Property and The Salvation Army 
173. 

*Panchis176: 

Purity Campaign of 1885, 35. 


Quakers and Woman, 162. 
Queen Victoria, 131. 


R 
Railton, Commissioner George, 48, 
69, 70, 169, 194. 
Ranger, Burton & Frost, 186. 
Reading, Viscount, 186. 
Reed, Henry, 37, 109. 
Rhodes, Cecil, 141, 147, 148, 149, 
150, I51. 
Rigby, Sir John, 176, 178, 186. 
Rogers, ‘ Hang-Theology,’ 38. 
Russell, Lord, of Killowen, 116, 178, 
184, 186. 


INDEX 


S 


Sacraments and The Salvation 
Army, I9I. 

Salisbury, Lord, 134, 135. 

Salvation Army, Opposition to, by 
Christian bodies, 26. 

Salvationists injured in persecu- 
tions, 25. 

Salvationist V.C., 159. 

Scott-Holland, Canon, 38. 

Samuel, Sir Herbert, 176. 

Sargant, Sir Charles, 177, 189. 

Shaftesbury, Earl of, 27. 

Shelters for men, 2. 

“ Social Statics,’ 202, 203, 204. 

Social Work of The Salvation Army, 
72. 

Sociology, Principles of, 201, 204. 

South African War, 145. 

Spencer, Herbert, 201, 202, 
204, 205, 206, 207. 

Spiritualism, 146. 

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon, 33, 34. 

Spurgeon, Thomas, 35. 

Stamford Appeal Case, 28. 

Stalker, Dr. James, 36. 

Sem WN 4 70, TES, 110; 121; 122, 
P28, 0825, 1260;°127; 120) 137,133; 
I4I, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147. 


4% 
Tait, Dr. (Archbishop), 60, 69, 71. 
Taylor, Bishop (‘ California’), 36. 
Temple, Archbishop, 75, 76. 


203, 


223 


Thomas, Urijah, Rev., 36. 

Thompson, Dr. (Archbishop of 
York), 59. 

‘ Times,’ The (London), 27, 149, 201, 
203, 205, 209. 

Tintern Abbey, 209. 

Titanic, 144, 145. 

‘Truth ’ (London), 112. 


V 
Vaughan, Cardinal, 77. 


W 
Waugh, Benjamin, 38. 
Welldon, Bishop, 38. 
Wells, Misses, 110. 
Wells, H. G., ror. 
Wernamo, Sweden, 90. 
Wesley, John, Sermons and Travels, 


rs; 
Westcott, Canon, 60, 61, 64, 197. 
Westminster Abbey, 215. 
Whyte, Dr. Alexander, 36. 
Wilberforce, Archdeacon, 38, 74, 75 
Wilkinson, Canon, 62, 63, 69. 
Williams, Mr. Vaughan, 186. 
Willis, Q.C., Mr. William, 186. 
Woman, Call and Ministry of, 161. 
Women’s Social Work, 171. 
Wright, Mr; Ke5. 115; 


af 
York, Archbishop of, 220. 


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